The Pacification of Ghent, which bound all the provinces of the Netherlands in a league against Spain, followed hard on the Spanish Fury of Antwerp; but the northern and the southern provinces quickly drifted apart, and in three years were rent in twain. The diplomacy of the Prince of Parma was as fatal to the cause of freedom as the fires of Alva. Holland stood firm and was saved in the long, weary struggle. Belgium halted between two opinions, and was lost. Brussels, the political capital, held out until it was starved into surrender; Bruges capitulated; and most towns of note sooner or later were taken, or made their peace humbly with Spain. But to obtain possession of Antwerp was a matter of far greater importance than the fate of any other town, and the siege, which Parma conducted with so much energy and skill, was the most serious military operation during the contest in the Netherlands. For Antwerp, though doomed to destruction by the Spanish Fury and sinking rapidly, was still the commercial capital of the Netherlands. 'Antwerp was the hinge on which the fate of the whole country, perhaps of all Christendom, was to turn. "If we get Antwerp," said the Spanish soldiers--so frequently that the expression passed into a proverb--"you shall go to Mass with us; if you save Antwerp, we will all go to conventicle with you."'[48] The population was large, about one hundred thousand. The Hôtel de Ville, the centre of the civic life, had already been rebuilt; the city, in spite of its frightful loss of trade, had not yet abandoned all hope of recovering its position; and William the Silent, before his death in 1584, had pointed out the means of defence--to destroy the dykes which kept the Scheldt within its bed, and flood all the meadows round the city, so as to prevent the Spaniards blockading the river by erecting a bridge, which would bar the passage of the ships on which the city would--in the event of a siege--depend for supplies of food. This advice was not taken. The Guild of Butchers, whose flocks fed on the meadows which it was proposed to flood, objected, met in the Vleechhuis, and sent a deputation to the magistrates, who quailed before them. Other guilds, together with most of the citizens, refused to believe that the Scheldt could be bridged, and the magistrates decided not to follow the plan of the Prince of Orange. Parma, therefore, was able to occupy the banks of the river, and to build forts which threatened the town and protected the army of workmen who were soon busily engaged in constructing the bridge which was to close the channel. At the same time, while his own position remained dry, the dykes at some distance had been opened, and the plains for miles around were turned into a waste of shallow water. [Illustration: ANTWERP ARCHWAY under the Vieille Boucherie.]