History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

of the mountains to Savoy. Continuing. their
march, they passed on through Burgundy and
Lorraine,[6] attended by two armies of observation,
the French on this side and the Swiss on that, to see
that they kept the straight road. Their march
resembled the progress of the boa-constrictor,
which, resting its successive coils upon the same
spot, moves its glittering but deadly body forwards.
Where the van-guard had encamped this night,
the main body of the army was to halt the next, and
the rear the night following. Thus this Apollyon
host went onward.
It was the middle of August when the
Spaniards arrived at the frontier of the Low
Countries. They found the gates open, and their
entrance unopposed. Those who would have
suffered the invaders to enter only over their dead
bodies were in their graves; the nobles were
divided or indifferent; the cities were paralysed by
the triumph of the royal arms at Valenciennes;
thousands, at the first rising of the tempest, had
retreated into the Church of Rome as into a harbour
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