FOR LOVE OF GAIN^139were dismissed as a bunch of bums (tas de gueux). Spain would spare
neither money nor men to show them who was boss.
That was the world of wealth and guns. But in the realm of belief,
two things sharpened the conflict and shaped the fate of this region.
First fanaticism and intolerance triumphed in Spain, leading in 1492 to
the expulsion of the Jews (later on to a similar expulsion of Muslims).
Many of the Jews sought peace and dignity in the Low Countries,
which had a reputation for tolerance.
The second great religious event was the rise of Protestant Chris
tianity as a system of organized worship and belief. Dissent and heresy
were an old story, but in 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his "Ninety-
five Theses" to the church door in Wittenberg, he struck the first blow
for secession. Christendom was headed for breakup. In the decades that
followed, Protestants in several countries (the English Lollards had
preceded them) translated the Bible into the vernacular. People read
and started thinking for themselves, and laymen joined divines in re
bellion. Among the areas that took smartly to the new dispensations:
the Low Countries, particularly the northern provinces, where dis
senters had long been indulged in matters of personal conscience.
So it was that when Spanish administrators and clerics went north,
they found a spiritual diversity and anarchy long since uprooted in
Spain. Intolerable. Their response was to punish and suppress, in the
face of outrage and against an abundance of good advice. After all,
right is right, and one must not sacrifice God to Mammon (except of
course in colonial areas). So the Spanish brought in the spies and
thought police and soldiery; introduced the Holy Office of the Inqui
sition into a land that had never known it (1522-23); and ordered a
number of exemplary executions that enraged the public and mobilized
resistance.
The inevitable rebellion was led by the Calvinists of the northern
provinces, the so-called sea-beggars; the southern provinces, over
whelmingly Catholic, remained more submissive. Even there, how
ever, martial law and an all-intrusive surveillance did violence to an
open and free market. In 1576, the southern provinces joined with
their Protestant brethren to make war against the intruders. In return
the intruders took some important cities—Antwerp and Ghent among
them—and put them to the sack in the time-honored mode of
sixteenth-century warfare. In a matter of years, the Spanish destroyed
Antwerp's prosperity and provoked a new exodus. Merchants, weavers
(who brought the valuable secrets of the "new draperies" to England),