In 1576, the troubles which had for a number of years been gathering force, brought about the league or union of the seventeen provinces, described as the Pacification of Ghent, and in the same year came the sack of Antwerp (known as the “Spanish Fury”). At this time Plantin had twenty-five presses, and about one hundred and fifty employees. According to his biographer, Rooses, the work of his printing-office was not at any period of the struggle entirely stopped, but it had gradually dwindled until, in 1585, when the authority of the King over the city of Antwerp had been finally established, Plantin had but one press at work, and that was the only press at the moment in operation throughout the city. The war had brought about a separation of the Netherlands, giving to the new Dutch Republic the Protestant States of the North, and leaving under the control of Spain the territory corresponding, in the main, to modern Belgium, the population of which was (after the Protestants had been killed or driven into exile) chiefly Catholic. One result of the contest and of this concentration of Protestantism in the Republic was to transfer to Amsterdam the larger share of the trade of which Antwerp had heretofore been the centre, and with this general trade departed also, in great measure, the publishing business and the literary activities of the city of the Scheldt. By the year 1585, the independence of the new Dutch Republic, while not formally recognised until a number of years later, was practically assured. In the Southern provinces, however, of which Antwerp was the chief city, the authority of the Spanish King was restored. The business of the city was resumed, but under sadly changed conditions. The city itself had been seriously devastated by the siege and ransacked by the Spanish troops. Many of the enterprising citizens who had been leaders in its trade and in its civic history had lost their lives, while many others, convicted or suspected of Protestant views, had been forced into exile or had voluntarily cast in their lot with their Protestant friends in the Dutch cities. Antwerp was left impoverished as to both men and resources. Her ships had disappeared, her commerce had been brought to a standstill. The war had been harassing and exhausting also for the States of the Republic, but they had won their independence, and had never lost their control of the sea. Their losses in men were, in part at least, offset by the immigration of Protestants from the provinces which had remained subject to the Spanish yoke, while their losses in property were to be speedily made good by the profits of a rapidly increasing trade.