The articles, on the whole, were as liberal as could have been expected.  The only hope for Antwerp and for a great commonwealth of all the Netherlands was in holding out, even to the last gasp, until England and Holland, now united, had time to relieve the city.  This was, unquestionably, possible.  Had Antwerp possessed the spirit of Leyden, had William of Orange been alive, that Spanish escutcheon, now raised with such indecent haste, might have never been seen again on the outside wall of any Netherland edifice.  Belgium would have become at once a constituent portion of a great independent national realm, instead of languishing until our own century, the dependency of a distant and a foreign metropolis.  Nevertheless, as the Antwerpers were not disposed to make themselves martyrs, it was something that they escaped the nameless horrors which had often alighted upon cities subjected to an enraged soldiery.  It redounds to the eternal honour of Alexander Farnese—­when the fate of Naarden and Haarlem and Maestricht, in the days of Alva, and of Antwerp itself in the horrible “Spanish fury,” is remembered—­that there were no scenes of violence and outrage in the populous and wealthy city, which was at length at his mercy after having defied him so long.

Civil and religious liberty were trampled in the dust, commerce and manufactures were destroyed, the most valuable portion of the citizens sent into hopeless exile, but the remaining inhabitants were not butchered in cold blood.

The treaty was signed on the 17th August.  Antwerp was to return to its obedience.  There was to be an entire amnesty and oblivion for the past, without a single exception.  Royalist absentees were to be reinstated in their possessions.  Monasteries, churches, and the King’s domains were to be restored to their former proprietors.  The inhabitants of the city were to practise nothing but the Catholic religion.  Those who refused to conform were allowed to remain two years for the purpose of winding up their affairs and selling out their property, provided that during that period they lived “without scandal towards the ancient religion”—­a very vague and unsatisfactory condition.  All prisoners were to be released excepting Teligny.  Four hundred thousand florins were to be paid by the authorities as a fine.  The patriot garrison was to leave the city with arms and baggage and all the honours of war.

This capitulation gave more satisfaction to the hungry portion of the Antwerpers than to the patriot party of the Netherlands.  Sainte Aldegonde was vehemently and unsparingly denounced as a venal traitor.  It is certain, whatever his motives, that his attitude had completely changed.  For it was not Antwerp alone that he had reconciled or was endeavouring to reconcile with the King of Spain, but Holland and Zeeland as well, and all the other independent Provinces.  The ancient champion of the patriot army, the earliest signer of the ‘Compromise,’ the bosom friend