but not more than enough to show the docile and enervated nature of this
portion of a people who had lost everything for which men cherish their
fatherland, but who could still find relief--after thirty years of
horrible civil war in painted pageantry, Latin versification, and the
classical dictionary.

Yet there was nothing much more important achieved by the archduke in the
brief period for which his administration was destined to endure.
Three phenomena chiefly marked his reign, but his own part in the three
was rather a passive than an active one--mutiny, assassination, and
negotiation--the two last attempted on a considerable scale but ending
abortively.

It is impossible to exaggerate the misery of the obedient provinces at
this epoch. The insane attempt of the King of Spain, with such utterly
inadequate machinery, to conquer the world has been sufficiently dilated
upon. The Spanish and Italian and Walloon soldiers were starving in
Brabant and Flanders in order that Spanish gold might be poured into the
bottomless pit of the Holy League in France.

The mutiny that had broken forth the preceding year in Artois and Hamault
was now continued on a vast scale in Brabant. Never had that national
institution--a Spanish mutiny--been more thoroughly organized, more
completely carried out in all its details. All that was left of the
famous Spanish discipline and military science in this their period of
rapid decay, seemed monopolized by the mutineers. Some two thousand
choice troops (horse and foot), Italians and Spanish, took possession of
two considerable cities, Sichem and Arschot, and ultimately concentrated
themselves at Sichem, which they thoroughly fortified. Having chosen
their Eletto and other officers they proceeded regularly to business.