August 7th the King presented her to the States General, saying that he had chosen her as his representative because she was so close to him by birth and "because of the singular affection she has always borne toward the Low Countries where she was born and raised and of which she knew all the languages." She retired from the Regency in 1567, but was called back once more in 1580 at the personal request of the King. As her son Alexander was then at the zenith of his power, and opposed to her resuming the regency, she finally declined the honour which was reluctantly given to him. She died in 1586 at the age of sixty-six. It was her fortune, or rather misfortune, to rule over the Netherlands at a period when the seething forces of religious unrest and protest were becoming too violent to be restrained. Had Philip II, her half-brother, been less bigoted, less cruel, and less blind to the best interests of the country and of his own dynasty, it is possible that the great popularity of the Duchess--who was sincerely loved by the majority of her subjects and respected by all--might have enabled the Government to restrain the rising passions of the people. If, instead of a policy of savage repression, the King of Spain had authorised Margaret to pursue a policy of moderation and conciliation, the fearful history of the next eighty years--the blackest page in human history--might never have been written. Unfortunately, moderation and conciliation were as foreign to the nature of that sombre monarch as to Torquemada himself, and fanaticism fought fanaticism with a fury that was as devoid of intelligence as it was of mercy. The first act in the drama of blood was the sudden outbreak of the frenzy of the iconoclasts, or image-breakers, which swept over the greater part of the Spanish Netherlands in the month of August, 1566. Scarcely a church, a chapel, a convent or a monastery, escaped the devastation that resulted from these fanatical attacks. Paintings, statuary, altars and chapels, even the tablets and monuments of the dead--the accumulated art treasures of centuries--were torn to pieces or carried bodily away. In some places the work of destruction was completed in a few hours, in others organised bands of pillagers worked systematically for days before the local authorities--taken completely by surprise--recovered their wits and put a stop to the work of desecration. The loss to art and civilisation effected by the iconoclasts in Flanders is beyond computation. The Regent acted with energy and decision, her spirited appeals to the magistrates finally bringing them to their senses and resulting in a speedy restoration of order. Philip, who had just cause for resentment, meditated vengeance, however, and in 1568 replaced the too gentle Margaret by the Duke of Alva.