CHAPTER XIV TO THE INDEPENDENCE OF BELGIUM AND THE DEATH OF PHILIP II. A.D. 1592--1599 The duke of Parma had chosen the count of Mansfield for his successor, and the nomination was approved by the king. He entered on his government under most disheartening circumstances. The rapid conquests of Prince Maurice in Brabant and Flanders were scarcely less mortifying than the total disorganization into which those two provinces had fallen. They were ravaged by bands of robbers called Picaroons, whose audacity reached such a height that they opposed in large bodies the forces sent for their suppression by the government. They on one occasion killed the provost of Flanders, and burned his lieutenant in a hollow tree; and on another they mutilated a whole troop of the national militia, and their commander, with circumstances of most revolting cruelty. The authority of governor-general, though not the title, was now fully shared by the count of Fuentes, who was sent to Brussels by the king of Spain; and the ill effects of this double viceroyalty was soon seen, in the brilliant progress of Prince Maurice, and the continual reverses sustained by the royalist armies. The king, still bent on projects of bigotry, sacrificed without scruple men and treasure for the overthrow of Henry IV. and the success of the League. The affairs of the Netherlands seemed now a secondary object; and he drew largely on his forces in that country for reinforcements to the ranks of his tottering allies. A final blow was, however, struck against the hopes of intolerance in France, and to the existence of the League, by the conversion of Henry IV. to the Catholic religion; he deeming theological disputes, which put the happiness of a whole kingdom in jeopardy, as quite subordinate to the public good.