A little later he observed that they, were “working away most furiously at the citadel, and that within a month it would be stronger than it ever had been before.”

The building went on, indeed, with astonishing celerity, the fortress rising out of its ruins almost as rapidly, under the hands of the royalists, as it had been demolished, but a few years before, by the patriots.  The old foundations still remained, and blocks of houses, which had been constructed out of its ruins, were thrown down that the materials might be again employed in its restoration.

The citizens, impoverished and wretched, humbly demanded that the expense of building the citadel might be in part defrayed by the four hundred thousand florins in which they had been mulcted by the capitulation.  “I don’t marvel at this,” said Parma, “for certainly the poor city is most forlorn and poverty-stricken, the heretics having all left it.”  It was not long before it was very satisfactorily established, that the presence of those same heretics and liberty of conscience for all men, were indispensable conditions for the prosperity of the great capital.  Its downfall was instantaneous.  The merchants and industrious artisans all wandered away from the place which had been the seat of a world-wide traffic.  Civilisation and commerce departed, and in their stead were the citadel and the Jesuits.  By express command of Philip, that order, banished so recently, was reinstated in Antwerp, as well as throughout the obedient provinces; and all the schools and colleges were placed under its especial care.  No children could be thenceforth instructed except by the lips of those fathers.  Here was a curb more efficacious even than the citadel.  That fortress was at first garrisoned with Walloons and Germans.  “I have not yet induced the citizens,” said Parma, “to accept a Spanish garrison, nor am I surprised; so many of them remembering past events (alluding to the ‘Spanish fury,’ but not mentioning it by name), and observing the frequent mutinies at the present time.  Before long, I expect, however, to make the Spaniards as acceptable and agreeable as the inhabitants of the country themselves.”

It may easily be supposed that Philip was pleased with the triumphs that had thus been achieved.  He was even grateful, or affected to be grateful, to him who had achieved them.  He awarded great praise to Alexander for his exertions, on the memorable occasions of the attack upon the bridge, and the battle of the Kowenstyn; but censured him affectionately for so rashly exposing his life.  “I have no words,” he said, “to render the thanks which are merited for all that you have been doing.  I recommend you earnestly however to have a care for the security of your person, for that is of more consequence than all the rest.”