There was some further conversation without any result.  Esquerdes complained that the confederates were the mark of constant calumny, and demanded that the slanderers should be confronted with them and punished.  “I understand perfectly well,” interrupted Margaret, “you wish to take justice into your own hands and to be King yourself.”  It was further intimated by these reckless gentlemen, that if they should be driven by violence into measures of self-protection, they had already secured friends in a certain country.  The Duchess, probably astonished at the frankness of this statement, is said to have demanded further explanations.  The confederates replied by observing that they had resources both in the provinces and in Germany.  The state council decided that to accept the propositions of the confederates would be to establish a triumvirate at once, and the Duchess wrote to her brother distinctly advising against the acceptance of the proposal.  The assembly at St. Trond was then dissolved, having made violent demonstrations which were not followed by beneficial results, and having laid itself open to various suspicions, most of which were ill-founded, while some of them were just.

Before giving the reader a brief account of the open and the secret policy pursued by the government at Brussels and Madrid, in consequence of these transactions, it is now necessary to allude to a startling series of events, which at this point added to the complications of the times, and exercised a fatal influence upon the situation of the commonwealth.

1566 [Chapter vii.]

Ecclesiastical architecture in the Netherlands—­The image-breaking—­ Description of Antwerp Cathedral—­Ceremony of the Ommegang—­ Precursory disturbances—­Iconoclasts at Antwerp—­Incidents of the image—­breaking in various cities—­Events at Tournay—­Preaching of Wille—­Disturbance by a little boy—­Churches sacked at Tournay—­ Disinterment of Duke Adolphus of Gueldres—­Iconoclasts defeated and massacred at Anchin—­Bartholomew’s Day at Valenciennes—­General characteristics of the image-breaking—­Testimony of contemporaries as to the honesty of the rioters—­Consternation of the Duchess—­ Projected flight to Mons—­Advice of Horn and other seigniors—­ Accord of 25th August.

The Netherlands possessed an extraordinary number of churches and monasteries.  Their exquisite architecture and elaborate decoration had been the earliest indication of intellectual culture displayed in the country.  In the vast number of cities, towns, and villages which were crowded upon that narrow territory, there had been, from circumstances operating throughout Christendom, a great accumulation of ecclesiastical wealth.  The same causes can never exist again which at an early day covered the soil of Europe with those magnificent creations of Christian art.  It was in these anonymous but entirely original achievements that Gothic genius; awaking from its long sleep of