position to persecute a Catholic minority, and especially the outrages
perpetrated at Ghent under the leadership of two Calvinist fanatics, De
Ryhove and De Hembyze, although they were done in direct opposition to
the wishes and efforts of Orange, always and at all times the champion
of toleration, did much to discredit him in Flanders and Brabant and to
excite bitter indignation among the Catholics, who still formed the
great majority of the population of the Netherlands. William felt
himself to be month by month losing power. The action he was at last
compelled to take, in rescuing Ghent from the hands of the
ultra-democratic Calvinist party and in expelling De Ryhove and De
Hembyze, caused him to be denounced as "a papist at heart." Indeed the
bigots of both creeds in that age of intolerance and persecution were
utterly unable to understand his attitude, and could only attribute it
to a lack of any sincere religious belief at all. Farnese, meanwhile,
whose genius for Machiavellian statesmanship was as remarkable as those
gifts for leadership in war which entitled him to rank as the first
general of his time, was a man who never failed to take full advantage
of the mistakes and weaknesses of his opponents. At the head of a
veteran force he laid siege in the spring of 1579 to the important
frontier town of Maestricht. He encountered a desperate resistance,
worthy of the defence of Haarlem or of Leyden, and for four months the
garrison held out grimly in the hope of relief. But, despite all the
efforts of Orange to despatch an adequate force to raise the siege, at
last (June 29) the town was carried by assault and delivered up for
three days to the fury of a savage soldiery. By the possession of this
key to the Meuse, Parma was now able to cut off communications between
Brabant and Protestant Germany. Had he indeed been adequately supported
by Philip it is probable that at this time all the provinces up to the
borders of Holland might have been brought into subjection by the
Spanish forces.