History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

Utrecht," which, without dissolving the
Confederacy of Ghent, created an inner alliance of
seven States, and thereby vastly quickened the
working of the Confederacy, and presented to the
world the original framework or first constitution
of that Commonwealth which has since become so
renowned under the name of the "United
Provinces."
Meanwhile, and before the Union of Utrecht
had come into being, Don John of Austria, the
newly-appointed governor, arrived in the Low
Countries. He brought with him an immense
prestige as the son of Charles V., and the hero of
Lepanto. He had made the Cross to triumph over
the Crescent in the bloody action that reddened the
waters of the Lepantine Gulf; and he came to the
Netherlands with the purpose and in the hope of
making the Cross triumphant over heresy, although
it should be by dyeing the plains of the Low
Countries with a still greater carnage than that with
which he, had crimsoned the Greek seas. He
arrived to find that the seventeen Provinces had
just banded themselves together to drive out the
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