"There is gross negligence, rivalry, avarice, and stupidity (grosze negligentia, aemulatio, geitz, umd unverstand), and great hatred of our evangelical religion"; "Civil war is inevitable: I find few patriots but many priests, raw young gentlemen, and paid officials, greedy of money and advancement, and not a few of them cowardly and spiritless as well." The Landgrave, with his biting way and Ciceronian tags, might well write to John complaining of privata odia et simultates. All that had been done by Alva was but praeludia to the horrors that were to follow—omne regnum inter se divisum desolabitur, "It was all a queer olla podrida [ein seltzamb ollo putrido"]; "it was a mere confusum chaos." And the French Protestant historian writes: "Res Belgicae in immensum chaos abire videntur."
It was but too true. And around this whirlpool stood hostile and self-interested powers. The German princes hated Catholics and Calvinists alike. The Landgrave was caustic and suspicious; the Elector of Saxony was angry and contemptuous; John of Nassau was honest but wooden. Germany, France, and England would take no part themselves, but they jealously counter-intrigued against each other. Elizabeth changed her tactics from hour to hour; Anjou and the Valois dreamed of a dominion for themselves. And in front of them all stood the Prince of Parma, with his fierce veterans, his wiles, and his gold, the incarnation of Spanish chivalry and Machiavellian craft.
The revolutionary outbreak of Ghent (October 1577) was most disastrous in its results, and one of those acts of the Prince which it is most difficult to justify. Two nobles of Flanders, demagogues of unscrupulous ambition
