Pacification of Ghent. But he had by the spirit that he had aroused in
Holland and its sister province of Zeeland created a barrier against
Spanish domination in the northern Netherlands which was not to be
broken down.

* * * * *




CHAPTER VI

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC


At the moment of the assassination of William the Silent it might well
have seemed to an impartial observer that the restoration of the
authority of the Spanish king over the whole of the Netherlands was only
a question of time. The military skill and the statecraft of Alexander
Farnese were making slow but sure progress in the reconquest of Flanders
and Brabant. Despite the miserable inadequacy of the financial support
he received from Spain, the governor-general, at the head of a
numerically small but thoroughly efficient and well-disciplined army,
was capturing town after town. In 1583 Dunkirk, Nieuport, Lindhoven,
Steenbergen, Zutphen and Sas-van-Gent fell; in the spring of 1584 Ypres
and Bruges were already in Spanish hands, and on the very day of
William's death the fort of Liefkenshoek on the Scheldt, one of the
outlying defences of Antwerp, was taken by assault. In August
Dendermonde, in September Ghent, surrendered. All West Flanders, except
the sea-ports of Ostend and Sluis, had in the early autumn of 1584 been