History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

Netherlands. The famine was followed by
pestilence. The number of the deaths, added to the
many banishments which had previously taken
place, nearly emptied some of the great towns of
Brabant and Flanders. In the country the peasants,
owing to the ravages of war, had neither horses to
plough their fields nor seed wherewith to sow
them, and the harvest was a complete failure. In the
terrible desolation of the country the beasts of prey
so multiplied, that within two miles of the once
populous and wealthy city of Ghent, not fewer than
a hundred persons were devoured by wolves.
Meanwhile Hollland and Zealand presented a
picture which was in striking contrast to the
desolation and ruin that overspread the Southern
and richer Provinces. Although torn by factions,
the result of the intrigues of Leicester, and
burdened with the expense of a war which they
were compelled to wage with Parma, their
inhabitants continued daily to multiply, and their
wealth, comforts, and power to grow. Crowds of
Protestant refugees flocked into the Northern
Provinces, which now became the seat of that
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