storm, in taking quiet possession of the wreck. "We had every thing of
value," says Procureur-General De la Barre, "carefully inventoried,
weighed, locked in chests, and placed under a strict guard in the prison
of the Halle, to which one set of keys were given to the ministers, and
another to the magistrates." Who will dare to censure in very severe
language this havoc among stocks and stones in a land where so many
living men and women, of more value than many statues, had been
slaughtered by the inquisition, and where Alva's "Blood Tribunal" was so
soon to eclipse even that terrible institution in the number of its
victims and the amount of its confiscations?

Yet the effect of the riots was destined to be most disastrous for a time
to the reforming party. It furnished plausible excuses for many lukewarm
friends of their cause to withdraw from all connection with it. Egmont
denounced the proceedings as highly flagitious, and busied himself with
punishing the criminals in Flanders. The Regent was beside herself with
indignation and terror. Philip, when he heard the news, fell into a
paroxysm of frenzy. "It shall cost them dear!" he cried, as he tore
his beard for rage; "it shall cost them dear! I swear it by the soul
of my father!" The Reformation in the Netherlands, by the fury of these
fanatics, was thus made apparently to abandon the high ground upon which
it had stood in the early summer. The sublime spectacle of the
multitudinous field-preaching was sullied by the excesses of the image-
breaking. The religious war, before imminent, became inevitable.

Nevertheless, the first effect of the tumults was a temporary advantage
to the Reformers. A great concession was extorted from the fears of the
Duchess Regent, who was certainly placed in a terrible position. Her
conduct was not heroic, although she might be forgiven for trepidation.
Her treachery, however, under these trying circumstances was less venial.