The effect of the promulgation of this measure was instantaneous.  Two millions and a half of bills of exchange sold by the Cardinal Albert came back in one day protested.  The chief merchants and bankers of Europe suspended payment.  Their creditors became bankrupt.  At the Frankfort fair there were more failures in one day than there had ever been in all the years since Frankfort existed.  In Genoa alone a million dollars of interest were confiscated.  It was no better in Antwerp; but Antwerp was already ruined.  There was a general howl of indignation and despair upon every exchange, in every counting-room, in every palace, in every cottage of Christendom.  Such a tremendous repudiation of national debts was never heard of before.  There had been debasements of the currency, petty frauds by kings upon their unfortunate peoples, but such a crime as this had never been conceived by human heart before.

The archduke was fain to pawn his jewelry, his plate, his furniture, to support the daily expenses of his household.  Meantime he was to set an army in the field to relieve a city, beleaguered by the most warlike monarch in Christendom.  Fortunately for him, that prince was in very similar straits, for the pressure upon the public swindlers and the auction sales of judicial ermine throughout his kingdom were not as rapidly productive as had been hoped.

It was precisely at this moment, too, that an incident of another nature occurred in Antwerp, which did not tend to make the believers in the possibility of religious or political freedom more in love with the system of Spain and Rome.  Those blood-dripping edicts against heresy in the Netherlands, of which enough has been said in previous volumes of this history, and which had caused the deaths, by axe, faggot, halter, or burial alive, of at least fifty thousand human creatures—­however historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence—­had now been, dormant for twenty years.  Their activity had ceased with the pacification of Ghent; but the devilish spirit which had inspired them still lived in the persons of the Jesuits, and there were now more Jesuits in the obedient provinces than there had been for years.  We have seen that Champagny’s remedy for the ills the country was enduring was “more Jesuits.”  And this, too, was Albert’s recipe.  Always “more Jesuits.”  And now the time had come when the Jesuits thought that they might step openly with their works into the daylight again.  Of late years they had shrouded themselves in comparative mystery, but from their seminaries and colleges had gone forth a plentiful company of assassins against Elizabeth and Henry, Nassau, Barneveld, and others who, whether avowedly or involuntarily, were prominent in the party of human progress.  Some important murders had already been accomplished, and the prospect was fair that still others might follow, if the Jesuits persevered.  Meantime those ecclesiastics thought that a wholesome example might be by the spectacle of a public execution.