"At the hour of vespers our good General arrived, with fifty foot-soldiers very much fatigued. As soon as I learned that he was coming, I ran home and put on a new soutain, the best which I had, and a surplice, and, going out with a crucifix in my hand, I went forward to receive him; and he, a gentleman and a good Christian, before entering, kneeled and all his followers, and returned thanks to the Lord for the great favors which he had received. My companions and myself marched in front in procession chanting, so that we all returned with the demonstrations of joy."
During the later mediæval and early modern periods, European states and provinces passed through many changes of political relation. In those times the territories comprised under the name of the Netherlands--embracing the present Holland and Belgium--belonged successively, in whole or in part, to different governments. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the region was united with Burgundy; in 1477 it passed to the Hapsburgs; and later it came under Spanish dominion.
In the reign of Charles V the Protestant Reformation spread through the Netherlands, whose peoples shared in all the disputes and turbulences of that religious revolution. Often in great peril, the liberties of the Netherlands were more than ever endangered by the absorption of the provinces into the vast empire of Charles. The Emperor issued persecuting edicts against the Protestant inhabitants, introduced the Inquisition with its terrible _auto dafé_, which spared neither character nor sex, and by his severe oppression caused the people of the Netherlands to feel themselves "destined to perpetual slavery." The number of martyrs there during the reign of Charles has been estimated on high authority at one hundred thousand, although some modern historians place it far below. The Inquisition, at all events, did some of its most cruel work in the Netherlands during that period.
Toward the end of Charles' reign the Netherlands secured a certain degree of exemption from these persecutions. Philip II, when he succeeded his father, Charles V, on the throne of Spain, renewed such favorable pledges to the Netherlands as the Emperor had given. But once in full power (1555), Philip began the "dark and bloody reign" which a few years later drove the Netherlander to their great revolt, under the lead of William, Prince of Orange, called "William the Silent."