My companions and myself marched in
front in procession chanting, so that we all returned with the
demonstrations of joy."
REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS AGAINST SPAIN
RISE OF THE GUEUX OR BEGGARS
A.D. 1566
FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER
During the later mediaeval and early modern periods, European states
and provinces passed through many changes of political relation. In
those times the territories comprised under the name of the
Netherlands--embracing the present Holland and Belgium--belonged
successively, in whole or in part, to different governments. In the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the region was united with
Burgundy; in 1477 it passed to the Hapsburgs; and later it came
under Spanish dominion.
In the reign of Charles V the Protestant Reformation spread through
the Netherlands, whose peoples shared in all the disputes and
turbulences of that religious revolution. Often in great peril,
the liberties of the Netherlands were more than ever endangered by
the absorption of the provinces into the vast empire of Charles.
The Emperor issued persecuting edicts against the Protestant
inhabitants, introduced the Inquisition with its terrible _auto
dafe_, which spared neither character nor sex, and by his severe
oppression caused the people of the Netherlands to feel themselves
"destined to perpetual slavery.
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