The joyous entry of the boy prince who was afterward to become Charles V was the signal for ten days of rejoicing by the citizens of Antwerp. This was early in the year 1515; and, in truth, the city prospered mightily under the rule of the great Emperor, who favoured it on many notable occasions. The bankers and merchant princes of Antwerp became renowned the world over for their wealth and magnificence. Anthony Fugger, who was the banker of Maximilian and Charles V, left a fortune of six million golden crowns, and it is said that his name survives to this day as a synonym for wealth—the common people calling any one who is extremely rich a rykke Fokker, a rich Fugger. It is related that another rich Antwerp merchant, Gasparo Dozzo, on being privileged to entertain the Emperor in his house, cast into the fire a promissory note for a large loan he had formerly made to his sovereign.
This period of wealth and prosperity continued till the very end of the reign of the Emperor, but under his successor, Philip II, the city was plunged into misfortunes and miseries as swift and as appalling as those that befell in the terrible Fall of 1914. In 1556 Philip opened a chapter of the Knights of the Golden Fleece at St. Mary’s, afterward the cathedral, in Antwerp—thereby recognising the supremacy of this town over the others in his Flemish dominions. Among the new knights to whom he gave the accolade were William the Silent and the Count of Horn. Little men thought on that day of festivity and good will what the future held in store for them all!
On August 18, 1566, the miraculous statue of the Blessed Virgin was taken from its place in St. Mary’s church and carried through the streets of the city in a solemn procession—as it had been for nearly two hundred years. This time there were murmurs of disapproval from the crowds that lined the streets, some stones were thrown, and the procession hastily returned to the church. The next day a small mob, composed for the most part of boys and men of the lowest class, entered the church and destroyed the statue and the entire contents of the sacred edifice, including some seventy altars, and paintings and statues almost without number. The organ, then the wonder of Europe, was ruined, and the rabble dressed itself in the costly vestments of the clergy and carried away the treasures of the church and even the contents of the poor boxes. This was the beginning of the work of the image-breakers, as they came to be called, which spread throughout Flanders until scarcely a religious edifice had escaped the destruction of its movable contents, while a few here and there were burned. As noted in the chapter on Audenaerde, Margaret of Parma was Regent at this time and acted resolutely to suppress the disorders—which were largely due to the supine attitude of the local magistrates at the beginning.
She had all but succeeded in restoring peace and quiet throughout Flanders when Philip suddenly decided to send an army there, and selected the Duke of Alva to command it. The story of the eighty years’ war that followed is familiar to every American through Motley’s account of it, although that brilliant writer is more concerned with the details relating to the Dutch provinces than those regarding the portion of the Netherlands that remained subject to Spain. Two events, however, in the long war were so directly concerned with Antwerp, and loom so large in its history, that they cannot be passed over here. Both have a renewed interest in view of the history of Antwerp’s latest siege in 1914. These are the Spanish Fury, and the great siege of the city by the Duke of Parma.
Alva, who superseded the gentle Margaret of Parma as Regent of the Netherlands, quickly took stern measures for the repression of further disorders at Antwerp, which he regarded as a hot-bed of heresy. A huge citadel was built at the southern end of the town, near the Scheldt, in 1572, in the centre of which Alva erected a bronze statue of himself. On the marble pedestal the inscription related how “the most faithful minister of the best of Kings had stamped out sedition, repelled the rebels, set up religion, and restored justice and peace to the country.” So far were these boasts from being true that only the following year, in 1573, Alva stole away to Spain secretly, his government a failure, his army mutinous, and half of the country he had been sent to rule in open and successful revolt. War with England had ruined the commerce of Antwerp, Alva’s fiscal policy and incessant taxes had half beggared the people of the entire country, while thousands of the noblest and bravest in the land had met death on the scaffold or in the torture chambers of the Inquisition.
Requesens, the next Regent, was unable either to stem the rising tide of revolt or to pay his soldiers—King Philip failing to send funds until the pay of the Spanish veterans was at one time twenty-two months in arrears. The sudden death of Requesens in 1576 left matters in a nearly chaotic condition. The veterans who had been fighting in Zeeland against the Dutch mutinied and returning to Flanders captured the town of Alost, where they forced the citizens to give them food and shelter. On November 4th, 1576, the mutineers marched to Antwerp, some two thousand strong, where they joined the Spaniards and mercenaries in the citadel. They were under the command of an Eletto, or elected leader. Jerome Roda, a Spaniard, had proclaimed himself the commandant of the fortress until the new Regent, Don John of Austria, should arrive in Flanders. Under these two worthies the combined forces in the citadel, some five thousand men in all, proceeded to attack the city. The citizens, on their side, had for some time feared such an attack and should have been able to repel it. There were fourteen thousand armed burghers, four thousand Walloons and an equal number of German troops—twenty-two thousand in all. It may have been that they felt unduly secure against an attack on that day because it was Sunday. It is certain that they were badly commanded.
Shortly after noon the Spaniards rushed from the citadel and across the broad open esplanade cleared a few years before by Alva, shouting their war cry, Sant Jago y cierra España. The Eletto was the first to fall, but the rush of furious soldiers was not to be stopped by a single volley. The Walloons put up a brave fight but part of the Germans treacherously lowered their pikes and let the Spaniards pass down the rue St. Georges. On the Place de Meir the defenders made another stand, but were swiftly swept back in a confused and disorganised mass by the Spanish cavalry. At the Hotel de Ville the burghers fought fiercely until the mutineers set fire to the edifice. In the conflagration that followed not only this noble structure, one of the finest in Europe, but the adjoining guild houses and some eighty other buildings were consumed. Of the Hotel de Ville only the blackened walls remained. By nightfall the Spaniards and the German mercenaries, most of whom had joined the victors in order to share in the spoils, were masters of the doomed city.
That night the scenes of pillage and rapine as the savage and half drunken soldiers swept through the streets and ransacked the houses of all who did not instantly pay a stiff ransom, exceed the descriptive powers of the contemporary historians. One of the burgomasters was stabbed to end a quarrel as to his ransom. Many burghers were killed near the town hall, or were burned within it like rats. For three days the city was given up to be sacked. The number who were killed, including women and children, has been variously estimated at from seven thousand to seventeen thousand of the citizens and defenders of the city, and from two hundred and fifty to six hundred of the Spaniards. The loss in property amounted to many millions, but no accurate estimate could be made of it, as many who suffered most in this respect lost their lives as well. Cartloads of plunder were sent out of the city, while much of it was actually sold by those who did not care or dare to keep it in a temporary market-place at the Bourse. Some were said to have concealed their wealth by having sword hilts and breastplates made of solid gold. Like the ill-gotten gains of the Spaniards in America, however, none of this booty—the reward of treachery, of assassination, of cruelty and the sudden setting free of all the basest elements in human nature—profited its captors very greatly. In a few days after the arrival of Don John, the new Regent, the mutinous soldiers were paid off and marched away to Maestricht and presently to other battlefields, from Flanders to Lombardy, where, no doubt, most of the golden breastplates and sword hilts fell—in due time—to other conquerors. Such was the Spanish Fury—until 1914 the worst blot on civilisation that history records.
Soon after the Spaniards left the city permission was given to the people to destroy the citadel that the tyrant Alva had built to overawe the town. The entire population flocked to this welcome task—men, women and children, each taking a shovel, a basket or a barrow. It is related that even the great ladies of the city took part in the work of demolition—so hated had the grim fortress become. The statue of the cruel Duke that he had so vaingloriously erected in the centre of the citadel only five years before was torn down and dragged through the streets by a cheering throng. Charles Verlat has given the world a vivid picture of this incident which hangs in the Antwerp museum.