The establishment of a court like the Inquisition was still in
contemplation; Spaniards were still appointed to places of trust in
preference to Flemings; and finally, the Spanish soldiers, who ought
to have been removed long ago, were still burdening the country with
their presence. The woes of the people were becoming intolerable;
occasionally there were slight outbreaks of violence; and a low murmur
of vehement feeling ran through the whole population, foreboding a
general eruption. "Our poor fatherland!" they said to each other; "God
has afflicted as with two enemies, water and Spaniards; we have built
dikes and overcome the one, but how shall we get rid of the other?
Why, if nothing better occurs, we know one way at least, and we shall
keep it in reserve--we can set the two enemies against each other. We
can break down the dikes, inundate the country, and let the water and
the Spaniards fight it out between them."
20. About this time, too, the decrees of the famous Council of Trent,
which had been convened in 1545 to take into consideration the state
of the Church and the means of checking the new religion, and which
had closed its sittings in the end of 1563, were made public; and
Philip, the most zealous Catholic of his time, issued immediate orders
for their being enforced both in Spain and in the Netherlands. In
Spain the decrees were received as a matter of course, the council
having authority over the Catholic people; but the attempt to force
the mandates of an ecclesiastical body upon a people who neither
acknowledged its authority nor believed in its truth, was justly
regarded as an outrage, and the whole country burst out in a storm of
indignation.
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