CHAPTER XIII.
THE REGENT'S AUTHORITY REËSTABLISHED.
Reaction.—Appeal to Arms.—Tumult in Antwerp.—Siege of Valenciennes.—The Government triumphant.
1566, 1567.
The excesses of the iconoclasts, like most excesses, recoiled on the heads of those who committed them. The Roman Catholic members of the league withdrew, as we have seen, from an association which connected them, however remotely, with deeds so atrocious. Other Catholics, who had looked with no unfriendly eye on the revolution, now that they saw it was to go forward over the ruins of their religion, were only eager to show their detestation of it, and their loyalty to the government. The Lutherans, who, as already noticed, had never moved in much harmony with the Calvinists, were anxious to throw the whole blame of the excesses on the rival sect; and thus the breach, growing wider and wider between the two great divisions of the Protestants, worked infinite prejudice to the common cause of reform. Lastly, men like Egmont, who from patriotic motives had been led to dally[{291}] with the revolution in its infancy, seeming indeed almost ready to embrace it, now turned coldly away, and hastened to make their peace with the regent.
REACTION.
Margaret felt the accession of strength she was daily deriving from these divisions of her enemies, and she was not slow to profit by it. As she had no longer confidence in those on whom she had hitherto relied for support, she was now obliged to rely more exclusively on herself. She was indefatigable in her application to business. "I know not," writes her secretary, Armenteros, "how the regent contrives to live, amidst the disgusts and difficulties which incessantly beset her. For some months she has risen before dawn. Every morning and evening, sometimes oftener, she calls her council together. The rest of the day and night she is occupied with giving audiences, or with receiving despatches and letters, or in answering them."[872]
Margaret now bent all her efforts to retrace the humiliating path into which she had been led, and to reëstablish the fallen authority of the crown. If she did not actually revoke the concessions wrung from her, she was careful to define them so narrowly that they should be of little service to any one. She wrote to the governors of the provinces, that her license for public preaching was to be taken literally, and was by no means intended to cover the performance of other religious rites, as those of baptism, marriage, and burial, which she understood were freely practised by the reformed ministers. She published an edict reciting the terrible penalties of the law against all offenders in this way, and she enjoined the authorities to enforce the execution of it to the letter.[873]
The Protestants loudly complained of what they termed a most perfidious policy on the part of the regent. The right of public preaching, they said, naturally included that of performing the other religious ceremonies of the Reformed Church. It was a cruel mockery to allow men to profess a religion, and yet not to practise the rites which belong to it.—The construction given by Margaret to her edict must be admitted to savor somewhat of the spirit of that given by Portia to Shylock's contract. The pound of flesh might indeed be taken; but if so much as a drop of blood followed, woe to him that took it!
This measure was succeeded by others on the part of the government of a still more decisive character. Instead of the civil magistracy, Margaret now showed her purpose to call in the aid of a strong military force to execute the laws. She ordered into the country the levies lately raised for her in Germany. These she augmented by a number of Walloon regiments; and she placed them under the command of Aremberg, Megen, and other leaders in whom she confided. She did not even omit the prince of Orange, for though Margaret had but little confidence in William, she did not care to break with him. To the provincial governors she wrote to strengthen themselves as much as possible by additional recruits; and she ordered them to introduce garrisons into such places as had shown favor to the new doctrines.