The citadel, built by Alva to overawe the town, was occupied in 1576 by a garrison of Spaniards whose pay was in arrears, and who cast longing eyes on the El Dorado lying ready to their hands. The defenders were a body of Germans and Walloons who had just come from Brussels. These were mercenaries and not to be depended on, and the burghers themselves were not so hardy as of old. On the morning of November 4 the Spaniards, reinforced by a troop of mutineers from Alost, rushed through a thick mist which hung over the marshes of the Scheldt, and burst into the city. For three long days the streets ran blood. Men, women, and children were put to the sword without mercy. Public buildings and private dwellings were plundered. The whole town was set on fire. Women were violated; there were cruel torturings; and every possible crime was committed. Many were drowned in the river while trying to escape. Piles of dead lay in the Grande Place. Of the Hôtel de Ville, where the Burgomaster and most of the magistrates met their death, nothing remained but the bare walls. The archives of the city perished in the flames. Eight thousand corpses lay among the smouldering ruins—for this massacre was more deadly than the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. 'The city, which had been a world of wealth and splendour, was changed into a charnel-house, and from that time its commercial supremacy was blasted.'[47] Within four years of the Spanish Fury almost the whole trade of Antwerp had been transferred to Amsterdam, and the time of the final catastrophe was at hand.
The Pacification of Ghent, which bound all the provinces of the Netherlands in a league against Spain, followed hard on the Spanish Fury of Antwerp; but the northern and the southern provinces quickly drifted apart, and in three years were rent in twain. The diplomacy of the Prince of Parma was as fatal to the cause of freedom as the fires of Alva. Holland stood firm and was saved in the long, weary struggle. Belgium halted between two opinions, and was lost. Brussels, the political capital, held out until it was starved into surrender; Bruges capitulated; and most towns of note sooner or later were taken, or made their peace humbly with Spain. But to obtain possession of Antwerp was a matter of far greater importance than the fate of any other town, and the siege, which Parma conducted with so much energy and skill, was the most serious military operation during the contest in the Netherlands. For Antwerp, though doomed to destruction by the Spanish Fury and sinking rapidly, was still the commercial capital of the Netherlands. 'Antwerp was the hinge on which the fate of the whole country, perhaps of all Christendom, was to turn. "If we get Antwerp," said the Spanish soldiers—so frequently that the expression passed into a proverb—"you shall go to Mass with us; if you save Antwerp, we will all go to conventicle with you."'[48] The population was large, about one hundred thousand. The Hôtel de Ville, the centre of the civic life, had already been rebuilt; the city, in spite of its frightful loss of trade, had not yet abandoned all hope of recovering its position; and William the Silent, before his death in 1584, had pointed out the means of defence—to destroy the dykes which kept the Scheldt within its bed, and flood all the meadows round the city, so as to prevent the Spaniards blockading the river by erecting a bridge, which would bar the passage of the ships on which the city would—in the event of a siege—depend for supplies of food. This advice was not taken. The Guild of Butchers, whose flocks fed on the meadows which it was proposed to flood, objected, met in the Vleechhuis, and sent a deputation to the magistrates, who quailed before them. Other guilds, together with most of the citizens, refused to believe that the Scheldt could be bridged, and the magistrates decided not to follow the plan of the Prince of Orange. Parma, therefore, was able to occupy the banks of the river, and to build forts which threatened the town and protected the army of workmen who were soon busily engaged in constructing the bridge which was to close the channel. At the same time, while his own position remained dry, the dykes at some distance had been opened, and the plains for miles around were turned into a waste of shallow water.
ANTWERP
Archway under the Vieille Boucherie.
The siege lasted for seven months. For some time food reached the city in ships which succeeded in forcing their way up from Flushing and past the Spaniards; but blockade-runners expect a big return for their risks, and when the magistrates were so foolish as to put a limit on the price of wheat, the supplies from outside came to an end. The building of the bridge went on, slowly but surely. The weather was cold and stormy. The river, in winter flood, made the task almost impossible; but the Spaniards toiled on with wonderful patience and courage, and at last, on February 25, 1585, their work was finished, and the Scheldt was closed. The garrison made desperate efforts by sallies, fire-ships—everything they could think of—to destroy Parma's work, but all in vain. The citizens trembled at the prospect of a famine. England and Holland were sending help; but stout hearts like those which, a century later, maintained the defence of Londonderry till the boom was broken, were not to be found in Antwerp. Negotiations were opened, and, after a long time spent in discussing terms, the capitulation was signed on August 17, 1585. The terms of the surrender were not hard. An amnesty was granted, and the garrison received the honours of war; but on one point Philip was inexorable—there must be no liberty of conscience, no religion but that of Rome.
What this meant to Antwerp was soon apparent. The Reformation had many disciples there.[49] They were called upon to choose between giving up their religion or leaving the country. A period of two years was fixed, during which the Protestant merchants and the Protestant workmen of Antwerp, on whose business capacity and labour the prosperity of the city depended, might leave their places of business and abandon their homes; and in order that the rising generation should breathe, from their earliest days, a purely orthodox atmosphere, Parma was instructed to see that the selection of teachers was left in the hands of the Jesuits, so that no Protestants should have a voice in the education of the young. Antwerp suffered from this policy of intolerance in the same way as, exactly one hundred years afterwards, France suffered from the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The flower of the population left, carrying with them what remained of their wealth and, a greater loss, their skill and habits of industry. 'The poor city is most forlorn and poverty-stricken, the heretics having all left it,' were Parma's own words.[50]
ANTWERP
The Concierge of the Musée Plantin-Moretus.
The people of Antwerp might well have applied to themselves the words used by Gerard Truchses of Cologne, when lamenting the supineness of the German Princes during the death struggle against Rome and the Escurial: 'We shall find our destruction in our immoderate desire for peace.' Peace they had obtained, but a peace which brought them no relief, and left them face to face with starvation; for Sidney—that Sidney of whom tradition tells the well-known story of his cup of water given to the wounded soldier—saw to it that not one bushel of wheat was carried up the Scheldt past Flushing, which he held as Governor for the Queen of England, to what was now a Spanish town.[51]