When the Prince of Orange, who had earnestly defended the cause of freedom, left the Netherlands for Germany in 1567, the country, says Motley, “was absolutely helpless, the popular heart cold with apprehension. All persons at all implicated in the late troubles, or suspected of heresy, fled from their homes. Fugitive soldiers were hunted into rivers, cut to pieces in the fields, hanged, burned, or drowned, like dogs, without quarter and without remorse. The most industrious and valuable part of the population left the land in droves. The tide swept outwards with such rapidity that the Netherlands seemed fast becoming the desolate waste they had been before the Christian era. Throughout the country those Reformers who were unable to effect their escape betook themselves to their old lurking-places. The new religion was banished from the cities, every conventicle was broken up by armed men, the preachers and leading men were hanged, their disciples beaten with rods, reduced to beggary, or imprisoned, even if they sometimes escaped the scaffold. An incredible number, however, were executed for religious causes. Hardly a village so small, says the Antwerp chronicler, but that it could furnish one, two, or three hundred victims to the executioner. The new churches were levelled to the ground, and out of their timber gallows were constructed. It was thought an ingenious pleasantry to hang the Reformers upon the beams under which they had hoped to worship God.”[35] The troubles became more and more serious, and at length culminated in open revolt. In 1567 the Duke of Alva arrived in Brussels with a well-appointed army of Spanish veterans, and at once began his career of blood and cruelty. When he left the country, six years later, a baffled man, he is said to have boasted that he had caused 18,600 persons to be executed during that period. On the 16th February, 1568, the Inquisition framed the most comprehensive death-warrant ever issued, and ten days later Philip confirmed it; the whole of the inhabitants of the Netherlands were regarded as heretics and condemned to death, a few persons only being excepted by name. Motley appears to have no doubt as to the authenticity of this appalling document, but Prescott states that he can find no Spanish record of it, and that it is related by only two Dutch historians. In 1568 the rebellion broke out in earnest, and led to that great and glorious war which lasted, with intervals, for eighty years, with the result that the Low Countries were delivered from the oppressor, and one of the noblest of nations secured its independence and religious freedom. _The Spiritual Franciscans._