The =decline= of the city in later times was due to a variety of concurrent causes, some of them strangely artificial, which long distracted trade from one of its most natural outlets in Europe. The Spanish troops began the devastation, during the abortive attempt of the southern provinces to shake off the yoke of Spain; in 1576, the Town Hall and nearly a thousand noble buildings were burnt, while 8,000 people were ruthlessly massacred. In 1585, the Duke of Parma completed the destruction of the local prosperity: the population was largely scattered, and the trade of Antwerp completely ruined. The long and unsuccessful rebellion, the division which it unhappily caused between Holland and Belgium, and the rapid commercial rise, first of Amsterdam and then of England, all contributed to annihilate the mercantile importance of Antwerp. The Dutch erected forts on their own territory at the mouth of the Schelde, and refused to allow shipping to proceed up the river. Finally by the Treaty of Munster in 1648 it was agreed that no sea-going vessel should be allowed to ascend the estuary to Antwerp, but that all ships should unload at a Dutch port, goods being forwarded by river craft to the former capital of European commerce. From that date forward to the French occupation in 1794, Antwerp sank to the position of a mere local centre, while Rotterdam and Amsterdam took its place as commercial cities. In the latter year, however, the French reopened the navigation of the Schelde, and destroyed the iniquitous Dutch forts at the entrance to the river. Napoleon, in whose empire the town was included, constructed a harbour and built new quays; but after his fall, Antwerp was made over to Holland, and began to trade as a Dutch seaport. The erection of Belgium into a separate kingdom in 1830 again told against it, as the Dutch maintained their unjust power of levying tolls on the shipping; in addition to which drawback, Antwerp had suffered heavily from siege during the War of Independence. In 1863, however, the Dutch extortioners were bought off by a heavy money payment, and Antwerp, the natural outlet of the Schelde, and to a great extent of the German empire, once more regained its natural place as a main commercial port of Europe. Since that date, its rise has been extraordinarily rapid, in correspondence with the large development of Belgian manufactures and still more with the new position of Germany as a world-trading power. Indeed, nothing but the artificial restrictions placed upon its commerce by the selfishness and injustice of the Dutch could ever have prevented the seaport of the Schelde from ranking as one of the chief harbours of the world, as soon as ocean-going ships demanded ports of that size, and as commerce had no longer anything to fear from marauding pirates.