She had all but succeeded in restoring peace and quiet throughout Flanders when Philip suddenly decided to send an army there, and selected the Duke of Alva to command it. The story of the eighty years' war that followed is familiar to every American through Motley's account of it, although that brilliant writer is more concerned with the details relating to the Dutch provinces than those regarding the portion of the Netherlands that remained subject to Spain. Two events, however, in the long war were so directly concerned with Antwerp, and loom so large in its history, that they cannot be passed over here. Both have a renewed interest in view of the history of Antwerp's latest siege in 1914. These are the Spanish Fury, and the great siege of the city by the Duke of Parma. Alva, who superseded the gentle Margaret of Parma as Regent of the Netherlands, quickly took stern measures for the repression of further disorders at Antwerp, which he regarded as a hot-bed of heresy. A huge citadel was built at the southern end of the town, near the Scheldt, in 1572, in the centre of which Alva erected a bronze statue of himself. On the marble pedestal the inscription related how "the most faithful minister of the best of Kings had stamped out sedition, repelled the rebels, set up religion, and restored justice and peace to the country." So far were these boasts from being true that only the following year, in 1573, Alva stole away to Spain secretly, his government a failure, his army mutinous, and half of the country he had been sent to rule in open and successful revolt. War with England had ruined the commerce of Antwerp, Alva's fiscal policy and incessant taxes had half beggared the people of the entire country, while thousands of the noblest and bravest in the land had met death on the scaffold or in the torture chambers of the Inquisition.