The sixteenth century closes with the cession by Philip II. of the Spanish Netherlands to his daughter Isabella, as a dowry on her marriage to the Archduke Albert of Austria. The King died on September 13, 1598, and a year later the Infanta and her husband entered Brabant. When they rode through Brussels in the state procession, the Infanta's saddle was studded with diamonds and rubies to the value of 200,000 florins. The magistrates presented them with a magnificent service of silver plate. There were fêtes, fireworks, and illuminations, which lasted for three days. On a medal struck to commemorate this occasion, we see them seated in a triumphal chair, surrounded by sunbeams, and with olive branches in their hands. The condition of the country was deplorable, but the evils of the time seemed all forgotten in the midst of a round of festivities. The private virtues of Isabella and her husband made them popular, but, needless to say, Belgium was the battlefield of Europe during most of the seventeenth century. These almost incessant wars culminated, so far as Brussels was concerned, in the bombardment of August, 1695. For twenty years the city had been menaced with destruction. It is said that Antoinette Bourignon, a noted adventuress and soothsayer, who died in 1681, had foretold that the capital of Brabant would perish by fire, and this was remembered when, in the summer of 1695, Villeroi, failing to relieve Namur, which William III. was then besieging, marched on Brussels with an army 70,000 strong. In the first week of August it became known that an immense store of bombs had been prepared at Mons, and that Villeroi was at Enghien. The French left that place on the 10th, and next day encamped at Anderlecht, close to Brussels. Preparations were made for defence. The Guilds furnished men; the avenues between the Porte de Namur and the Porte de Hal were fortified; and the low-lying grounds were inundated. But the French came nearer; and on the 13th Villeroi sent in a message saying that the Most Christian King had ordered him to bombard the town in retaliation for the way in which the English and Dutch fleets had treated the seaports of France; that, as vengeance was repugnant to the goodness of his master, he had been commanded to say that if the allies would in future refrain from such modes of warfare, he would do the same by them, and retire from before the city if, within six hours, he received a definite answer of such a nature that he could accept it.