His previous connections in the Netherlands were of use to him, and he knew how to turn them to immediate account.  The great nobles, who had been uniformly actuated by jealousy of the Prince of Orange, who had been baffled in their intrigue with Matthias, whose half-blown designs upon Anjou had already been nipped in the bud, were now peculiarly in a position to listen to the wily tongue of Alexander Farnese.  The Montignys, the La Mottes, the Meluns, the Egmonts, the Aerschots, the Havres, foiled and doubly foiled in all their small intrigues and their base ambition, were ready to sacrifice their country to the man they hated, and to the ancient religion which they thought that they loved.  The Malcontents ravaging the land of Hainault and threatening Ghent, the “Paternoster Jacks” who were only waiting for a favorable opportunity and a good bargain to make their peace with Spain, were the very instruments which Parma most desired to use at this opening stage of his career.  The position of affairs was far more favorable for him than it had been for Don John when he first succeeded to power.  On the whole, there seemed a bright prospect of success.  It seemed quite possible that it would be in Parma’s power to reduce, at last, this chronic rebellion, and to reestablish the absolute supremacy of Church and King.  The pledges of the Ghent treaty had been broken, while in the unions of Brussels which had succeeded, the fatal religious cause had turned the instrument of peace into a sword.  The “religion-peace” which had been proclaimed at Antwerp had hardly found favor anywhere.  As the provinces, for an instant, had seemingly got the better of their foe, they turned madly upon each other, and the fires of religious discord, which had been extinguished by the common exertions of a whole race trembling for the destruction of their fatherland, were now re-lighted with a thousand brands plucked from the sacred domestic hearth.  Fathers and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, were beginning to wrangle, and were prepared to persecute.  Catholic and Protestant, during the momentary relief from pressure, forgot their voluntary and most blessed Pacification, to renew their internecine feuds.  The banished Reformers, who had swarmed back in droves at the tidings of peace and good-will to all men, found themselves bitterly disappointed.  They were exposed in the Walloon provinces to the persecutions of the Malcontents, in the Frisian regions to the still powerful coercion of the royal stadholders.

Persecution begat counter-persecution.  The city of Ghent became the centre of a system of insurrection, by which all the laws of God and man were outraged under the pretence of establishing a larger liberty in civil and religious matters.  It was at Ghent that the opening scenes, in Parma’s administration took place.  Of the high-born suitors for the Netherland bride, two were still watching each other with jealous eyes.  Anjou was at Mons, which city