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Mr. Comptroller Croft, advancing out of the clouds, like a propitious divinity, disguised in the garb of a foe and the scene was changed. The feeble old man, with his shufling, horse-trucking servant, ex-spy of Monsieur, had accomplished more work for Philip and Alexander than many regiments of Spaniards and Walloons could have done.
He had a "comfortless voyage and a ticklish message;" found all along the road signs of an approaching enterprise, difficult to be mistaken; reported 10,000 veteran Spaniards, to which force Stanley's regiment was united; 6000 Italians, 3000 Germans, all with pikes, corselets, and slash swords complete; besides 10,000 Walloons.
There was scarcely a struggle. The Walloons, not waiting to look their enemy in the face, abandoned the posts which whey had themselves claimed. The Spaniards crashed through the bulwark, as though it had been a wall of glass. The Eletto was first to mount the rampart; the next instant he was shot dead, while his followers, undismayed, sprang over his body, and poured into the streets.
Zwirina was by no means enamored of so adventurous a policy, and he so dexterously strung together the evil consequences which would accrue to the town from such obstinacy to wit, bombardments with red-hot bullets, loss of life, famine, plague, conflagrations, bankruptcy of the merchants, ruin of the guilds, storms, capitulations, wholesale blackmailing, nay, even the wresting of the churches from the hands of the Protestants that when it came to voting, the majority of the council decided that the town ought rather to conform to the will of the Prince by submitting to the change, than come to loggerheads with the Kaiser and the Sultan at the same time; and that the Walloons should be allowed to enter, especially as they were, after all, the soldiers of the King of Hungary.
In this bigoted spirit he was followed by too many of the Reforming mass, while, on their part, the Walloons were already banding themselves together in the more southern provinces, under the name of Malcontents.
Why, let's tell them we will not go! FIRST CUIRASSIER. Despising all discipline! No, my lads, no, Rather his corps let each of us seek, And quietly then with his comrades speak, That every soldier may clearly know, It were not for his good so far to go; For my Walloons to answer I'm free, Every man of 'em thinks and acts with me.
And these were the legions these very men or their immediate predecessors these Italians, Spaniards, Germans, and Walloons, who during so many terrible years had stormed and sacked almost every city of the Netherlands, and swept over the whole breadth of those little provinces as with the besom of destruction.
A Netherland army, composed principally of Walloons, under the command of the incapable Marquis Havre, the reckless de Heze and other nobles appeared before the capital, to prevent the worst.
The same sallow, mournful, ominous countenance, which Harold had before seen in the halls of Westminster, rising deathlike above the serge garb of the Benedict of Caen, now presented itself, and the monk thus spoke: "In the name of William, Duke of the Normans in the field, Count of Rouen in the hall, Claimant of all the realms of Anglia, Scotland, and the Walloons, held under Edward his cousin, I come to thee, Harold his liege and Earl."
The Catholics, by virtue of this accord, re-entered into possession of their churches and cloisters, but nothing could be obtained in favor of the imprisoned gentlemen. The Walloons and Malcontents were now summoned to lay down their arms; but, as might be supposed, they expressed dissatisfaction with the religious peace, proclaiming it hostile to the Ghent treaty and the Brussels union.
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