But, as has already been depicted in these pages, the Celtic element had
been more apt to receive than consistent to retain the generous impress
which had once been stamped on all the Netherlands. The Walloon
provinces had fallen away from their Flemish sisters and seemed likely to
accept a permanent yoke, while in the territory of the united States, as
John Baptist Tassis was at that very moment pathetically observing in a
private letter to Philip, "with the coming up of a new generation
educated as heretics from childhood, who had never heard what the word
king means, it was likely to happen at last that the king's memory, being
wholly forgotten nothing would remain in the land but heresy alone."
From this sad fate Cambray had been saved. Gavre d'Inchy had seventeen
years before surrendered the city to the Duke of Alencon during that
unlucky personage's brief and base career in the Netherlands, all, that
was left of his visit being the semi-sovereignty which the notorious
Balagny had since that time enjoyed, in the archiepiscopal city. This
personage, a natural son of Monluc, Bishop of Valence, and nephew of the,
distinguished Marshal Monluci was one of the most fortunate and the most
ignoble of all the soldiers of fortune who had played their part at this
epoch in the Netherlands. A poor creature himself, he had a heroine for
a wife. Renee, the sister of Bussy d'Amboise, had vowed to unite herself
to a man who would avenge the assassination of her brother by the Count
Montsoreau? Balagny readily agreed to perform the deed, and accordingly
espoused the high-born dame, but it does not appear that he ever wreaked
her vengeance on the murderer. He had now governed Cambray until the
citizens and the whole countryside were galled and exhausted by his
grinding tyranny, his inordinate pride, and his infamous extortions.
His latest achievement had been to force upon his subjects a copper
currency bearing the nominal value of silver, with the same blasting
effects which such experiments in political economy are apt to produce
on princes and peoples. He had been a Royalist, a Guisist, a Leaguer,