The following year (1633), after the death of Isabella, Philip IV recalled the Belgian delegates. He dissolved the States General a few months later (1634). From this time to the end of the eighteenth century, during the Brabançonne revolution, the representatives of the Belgian people were no longer consulted and had no share in the central Government of Belgium.
The truce of 1609-21 was used by the Government and the people to restore as far as possible the economic prosperity of the Catholic Netherlands. The relative success with which these efforts were crowned shows that some energy was left in the country, in spite of the blockade imposed on her trade and of the emigration of some of her most prominent sons to the United Provinces. It is a common mistake to presume that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, all economic and intellectual life left the Southern provinces and was absorbed by the Northern. The contrast was indeed striking between the young republic which was becoming the first maritime Power in Europe and the mother-country from which it had been torn, and which had ceased to occupy a prominent rank in European affairs. A medal was struck, in 1587, showing, on one side, symbols of want and misery, applied to the Catholic Netherlands, and, on the other, symbols of riches and prosperity, applied to the Northern Netherlands, whilst the inscriptions made it clear that these were the punishment of the impious and the reward of the faithful. But a careful study of the period would show that her most valuable treasure, the stubborn energy of her people, did not desert Belgium during this critical period, and that in a remarkably short time she succeeded in rebuilding her home, or at least those parts of it which she was allowed to repair.
At the end of the sixteenth century the situation, especially in Flanders and Brabant, was pitiful. The dikes were pierced, the polders were flooded and by far the greater part of the cultivated area left fallow. The amount of unclaimed land was so large in Flanders that the first new-comer was allowed to till it. Wild beasts had invaded the country, and only a mile from Ghent travellers were attacked by wolves. Bands of robbers infested the land, and in 1599 an order was issued to fell all the woods along roads and canals, in order to render travelling more secure. In Brabant, many villages had lost more than half their houses, the mills were destroyed and the flocks scattered. The conditions in several of the towns were still worse. At Ghent the famine was so acute among the poor that they even ate the garbage thrown in the streets. The population of Antwerp, from 100,000 in the fifteenth century, had fallen to 56,948 in 1645. Lille, on account of its industry, and Brussels, owing to the presence of the court, were the only centres which succeeded in maintaining their prosperity. The excesses of the foreign garrisons, often ill-paid and living on the population, added still further to the misery. The English traveller Overbury, who visited the seventeen provinces at the beginning of the truce, declared that, as soon as he had passed the frontier, he found "a Province distressed with Warre; the people heartlesse, and rather repining against their Governours, then revengefull against the Enemies, the bravery of that Gentrie which was left, and the Industry of the Merchant quite decayed; the Husbandman labouring only to live, without desire to be rich to another's use; the Townes (whatsoever concerned not the strength of them) ruinous; And to conclude, the people here growing poore with lesse taxes, then they flourish with on the States side."