During these deliberations in Spain, the Protestants in the Netherlands amply availed themselves of the privileges they had gained. They erected numerous wooden churches with incredible activity. Young and old, noble and plebeian, of these energetic men, assisted in the manual labors of these occupations; and the women freely applied the produce of their ornaments and jewels to forward the pious work. But the furious outrages of the iconoclasts had done infinite mischief to both political and religious freedom; many of the Catholics, and particularly the priests, gradually withdrew themselves from the confederacy, which thus lost some of its most firm supporters. And, on the other hand, the severity with which some of its members pursued the guilty offended and alarmed the body of the people, who could not distinguish the shades of difference between the love of liberty and the practice of licentiousness. The stadtholderess and her satellites adroitly took advantage of this state of things to sow dissension among the patriots. Autograph letters from Philip to the principal lords were distributed among them with such artful and mysterious precautions as to throw the rest into perplexity, and give each suspicions of the other's fidelity. The report of the immediate arrival of Philip had also considerable effect over the less resolute or more selfish; and the confederation was dissolving rapidly under the operations of intrigue, self-interest, and fear. Even the Count of Egmont was not proof against the subtle seductions of the wily monarch, whose severe yet flattering letters half frightened and half soothed him into a relapse of royalism. But with the Prince of Orange Philip had no chance of success. It is unquestionable that, be his means of acquiring information what they might, he did succeed in procuring minute intelligence of all that was going on in the king's most secret council. He had from time to time procured copies of the stadtholderess's despatches; but the document which threw the most important light upon the real intentions of Philip was a confidential epistle to the stadtholderess from D'Alava, the Spanish minister at Paris, in which he spoke in terms too clear to admit any doubt as to the terrible example which the king was resolved to make among the patriot lords. Bergen and Montigny confirmed this by the accounts they sent home from Madrid of the alteration in the manner with which they were treated by Philip and his courtiers; and the Prince of Orange was more firmly decided in his opinions of the coming vengeance of the tyrant.