In 1555, the Emperor abdicated in favour of his son Philip, known as =Philip II. of Spain=. But his brother Ferdinand, to whom he had resigned his Austrian dominions, was elected Emperor (having been already King of the Romans) as Ferdinand I. From his time forth, the Empire became more exclusively German, so that its connexion with Rome was almost forgotten save as a historic myth, degenerating into the mere legal fiction of a Holy Roman Empire, with nothing Roman in it. Thus, the Netherlands alone of the earlier Burgundian heritage remained in the holding of the Austrian kings of Spain, who ruled them nominally as native sovereigns, but practically as Spaniards and aliens by means of imported military garrisons. Philip II.—austere, narrow, domineering, fanatical—remained only four years in the Netherlands, and then retired to Spain, appointing his half-sister, =Margaret of Parma= (illegitimate daughter of Charles V.), regent of the Low Countries (1559-1567). She resided in the Ancienne Cour at Brussels. Her minister, Granvella, Bishop of Arras, made himself so unpopular, and the measures taken against the Protestants were so severe, that the cities, ever the strongholds of liberty, showed signs of revolution. They objected to the illegal maintenance of a Spanish standing army, and also to the Inquisition. In April, 1567, as a consequence of the discontents, the =Duke of Alva= was sent with 10,000 men as lieutenant-general to the Netherlands, to suppress what was known as the Beggars’ League (Les Gueux), now practically headed by the Prince of Orange (William the Silent). Alva entered Brussels with his Spanish and Italian mercenaries and treacherously seized his two suspected antagonists, Count Egmont and Count Hoorn. The patriotic noblemen were imprisoned at Ghent, in the Spaniards’ Castle, were condemned to death, and finally beheaded in the Grand’ Place at Brussels. (For fuller details of the great revolutionary movement thus inaugurated, see Motley’s _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, and Juste’s _Le Comté d’Egmont et le Comté de Hornes_.) Alva also established in Brussels his infamous “Council of Troubles,” which put to death in cold blood no less than 20,000 inoffensive burghers. His cold and impassive cruelty led to the =Revolt of the United Provinces= in 1568—a general movement of all the Spanish Netherlands (as they now began to be called) to throw off the hateful yoke of Spain. Under the able leadership of William of Orange, the Flemings besieged and reduced the Spaniards’ Castle at Ghent. In the deadly struggle for freedom which ensued, the Northern Provinces (Holland), aided by their great natural advantages for defence among the flooded marshes of the Rhine delta, succeeded in casting off their allegiance to Philip. They were then known as the United Netherlands. The long and heroic contest of the Southern Provinces (Belgium) against the Spanish oppressor was not equally successful. A desperate struggle