Virgin, which, as usual, had drawn a crowd to the town, and from whose
sentiments there was but too much reason for alarm. The image of the
Virgin was, with the usual pomp, carried round the town without
interruption; a few words of abuse, and a suppressed murmur about
idolatry, was all that the disapproving multitudes indulged in against
the procession.


1566. While the regent received from one province after another the
most melancholy accounts of the excesses of the Protestants, and while
she trembled for Antwerp, which she was compelled to leave in the
dangerous hands of the Prince of Orange, a new terror assailed her from
another quarter. Upon the first authentic tidings of the public
preaching she immediately called upon the league to fulfil its promises
and to assist her in restoring order. Count Brederode used this pretext
to summon a general meeting of the whole league, for which he could not
have selected a more dangerous moment than the present. So ostentatious
a display of the strength of the league, whose existence and protection
had alone encouraged the Protestant mob to go the length it had already
gone, would now raise the confidence of the sectarians, while in the
same degree it depressed the courage of the regent. The convention took
place in the town of Liege St. Truyen, into which Brederode and Louis of
Nassau had thrown themselves at the head of two thousand confederates.
As the long delay of the royal answer from Madrid seemed to presage no
good from that quarter, they considered it advisable in any case to
extort from the regent a letter of indemnity for their persons.

Those among them who were conscious of a disloyal sympathy with the
Protestant mob looked on its licentiousness as a favorable circumstance
for the league; the apparent success of those to whose degrading