History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

honor of a common country, and to expel the
massacring hordes of a common tyrant. It was now
when Requesens was dead, and the government
was for the time in the hands of the State Council,
and the fresh atrocities of the Spanish soldiers gave
added weight to his energetic words, that he wrote
to the people of the Netherlands to the effect that
"now was the time when they might deliver
themselves for ever from the tyranny of Spain. By
the good providence of God, the government had
fallen into their own hands. It ought to be their
unalterable resolve to hold fast the power which
they possessed, and to employ it in delivering their
fellow-citizens from that intolerable load of misery
under which they had so long groaned. The
measure of the calamities of the people, and of the
iniquity of the Spaniards, was now full. There was
nothing worse to be dreaded than what they had
already suffered, and nothing to deter them from
resolving either to expel their rapacious tyrants, or
to perish in the glorious attempt."[2] To stimulate
them to the effort to which he called them, he
pointed to what Holland and Zealand singlehanded
had done; and if "this handful of cities" had
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