x DON JOHN—GENERAL UNION—APOGEE 185

depth and fierceness of the religious animosities in the
midst of which he had to work.

This brief Life of William of Orange is not the place
\vherein to rehearse again the enormities of the Spanish
mutinies—how troops who for ten years had been
gorged with the massacre and plunder of " rebel" towns
and provinces turned savagely on their own officers and
rulers, and proceeded to slaughter the loyal subjects of
their King, and to sack the very cities which they
-were stationed to guard. The "Spanish Fury," which
wrecked Antwerp and butchered its inhabitants by
thousands, is in many ways the most horrible frenzy
in this war of horrors. The atrocities committed at
Mechlin, Naarden, or Haarlem were committed in a
captured city by a victorious army. The atrocities in
Antwerp were the wanton outburst in cold blood of the
garrison of a peaceful city—an orgy of lust, greed, and
savagery. It sent through the whole Netherlands such
a thrill of horror and dread as sufficed for a short
space to override the innate antagonism of race, language,
religion, and traditions.

The Prince had pressed on the Pacification of Ghent
because he had long known of the fresh danger that
threatened them in the person of the new Viceroy.
Philip at last made up his mind to send out as governor
his half-brother, the paladin Don John of Austria,
natural son of the late Emperor, just fresh from the
halo of his victory over the Turks at Lepanto, This
brilliant, fascinating knight-errant of romance, now in
his thirtieth year, with his chivalrous bearing and
glory of crusader, was exactly the man to revive the
loyal and Catholic traditions of the men of Flanders and