Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/402

 ifa REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. or false, reached Elizabeth that on his passage through France he had held an interview with Guise, where it had been arranged that as soon as the Huguenot towns were reduced, they were to make a joint demand upon her for the release of the Queen of Scots. 1 Escobedo betrayed Philip's trust, and encouraged what he had been commissioned "to prevent. To conquer England, conquer the Netherlands through England, and win a throne for himself, appears 4o have been Don John's fixed idea as he hastened to his government. The con- dition in which he found the Provinces dispelled rapidly these visionary schemes. M. Champagny, hitherto the most loyal of the Belgian nobles, was at the head of the new movement. Orange, seizing the opportunity, had sent circulars through the seventeen States, urging the people to rise and defend their liberties. Champagny had responded cor- dially, and the Spanish officers, to read a lesson, as they pretended, to the incipient mutiny, had dropped the reins on the neck of the army, and given over the threatened towns for the soldiers to work their will upon. Maestrecht was sacked on the 2Oth of October, and several hundreds of the citizens were murdered. A fortnight later Antwerp itself found a yet more dreadful fate. The palaces of its merchant princes, the magnificent Bourse, the warehouses which Nov. 3. 1 Sir Amyas Paulet, who had suc- ceeded Dale as ambassador at Paris, heard of the interview from Guise's secretary. He made further in- quiries and assured himself that it had really taken place. Paulet to Burghley, April, 1577; Paulet to Walsingham, May 9, 1577: MSS. France.