to military service after the ancient manner of fiefs, so that a splendid
cavalry, headed by the gentlemen of the country, should be ever ready to
mount and ride at the royal pleasure, in place of a horde of lazy
epicureans, telling beads and indulging themselves in luxurious vice.

Such views were entertained; such language often held. These
circumstances and sentiments had their influence among the causes which
produced the great revolt now impending. Care should be taken, however,
not to exaggerate that influence. It is a prodigious mistake to refer
this great historical event to sources so insufficient as the ambition of
a few great nobles, and the embarrassments of a larger number of needy
gentlemen. The Netherlands revolt was not an aristocratic, but a
popular, although certainly not a democratic movement. It was a great
episode--the longest, the darkest, the bloodiest, the most important
episode in the history of the religious reformation in Europe. The
nobles so conspicuous upon the surface at the outbreak, only drifted
before a storm which they neither caused nor controlled. Even the most
powerful and the most sagacious were tossed to and fro by the surge of
great events, which, as they rolled more and more tumultuously around
them, seemed to become both irresistible and unfathomable.

For the state of the people was very different from the condition of the
aristocracy. The period of martyrdom had lasted long and was to last
loner; but there were symptoms that it might one day be succeeded by a
more active stage of popular disease. The tumults of the Netherlands
were long in ripening; when the final outbreak came it would have been
more philosophical to enquire, not why it had occurred, but how it could
have been so long postponed. During the reign of Charles, the sixteenth
century had been advancing steadily in strength as the once omnipotent
Emperor lapsed into decrepitude. That extraordinary century had not