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Updated: May 21, 2025
Under Van den Berg was Count Bucquoy-Longueval, a Walloon officer of much energy and experience, now general-in-chief of artillery in the archduke's army.
The banished Reformers, who had swarmed back in droves at the tidings of peace and good-will to all men, found themselves bitterly disappointed. They were exposed in the Walloon provinces to the persecutions of the Malcontents, in the Frisian regions to the still powerful coercion of the royal stadholders. Persecution begat counter-persecution.
The Walloon provinces had fallen away from their Flemish sisters and seemed likely to accept a permanent yoke, while in the territory of the united States, as John Baptist Tassis was at that very moment pathetically observing in a private letter to Philip, "with the coming up of a new generation educated as heretics from childhood, who had never heard what the word king means, it was likely to happen at last that the king's memory, being wholly forgotten nothing would remain in the land but heresy alone."
The Catholic nobles, relying upon the strong feeling still rife throughout the Walloon country against the Reformed religion, and inflamed more than ever by their repugnance to Orange, whose genius threw them so completely into the shade, had already drawn closer to the Duke. The same influences were at work to introduce Alencon, which had formerly been employed to bring Matthias from Vienna.
These land-troops were English, but they belonged to the States' army, which was composed of Dutch, German, Walloon, Scotch, and Irish soldiers, and it was a liberal concession on the part of the republican Government to allow them to serve on the present expedition.
"These corrupt comedians, called rhetoricians," says the Walloon contemporary already cited, "afforded much amusement to the people." Always some poor little nuns or honest monks were made a part of the farce. It seemed as if the people could take no pleasure except in ridiculing God and the Church.
Few had yet declared themselves; but of the grandees who commanded large bodies of troops, and whose influence with their order was paramount, none were safe for the patriot cause throughout the Walloon country.
Omer and Béthune were the only important centres whose representatives could oppose those of the far more important agricultural districts. The question of race and language had no more influence on the attitude of the Walloon provinces than on that of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht. Both were determined by economic, social and religious conditions as well as by their strategic situation.
So Guise was plied more vigourously than ever by the Duke with advice and encouragement, and assisted with such Walloon carabineers as could be spared, while large subsidies and larger promises came from Philip, whose prudent policy was never to pay excessive sums, until the work contracted for was done.
Though extremely limited, this genre was cultivated with great success by the Walloon writers and is typical of the Belgian branch of the French letters of the period.
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