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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 11 CHAPTER II THE REVOLUTION IN THE NETHERLANDS AND ITS REACTION ON OTHER DISTRICTS OF THE EMPIRE UP TO 1568 At the time of the abdication of Charles V., and alt through the first decade of his son Philip II.'s reign, the German Netherlands were in a most highly flourishing condition. What .ZEneas Sylvius had said of Augsburg in the fifteenth century, ' This town excels all other towns of the world in riches,' might now be said of Antwerp. More than 1,000 foreign mercantile houses had been established there. As many as 2,500 ships were often to be seen in the river Scheldt; 500 came in regularly every day, and on market days as many as 800; 2,000 wagons, 10,000 peasants' carts drove every week into the town, which, with its suburbs, counted 200,000 inhabitants. It was said that more business was transacted at Antwerp in one month than in two years at Venice, even in the most brilliant period of this city. In the year 1560, the imports from Lisbon, merely in sugar and spices, reached the value of 1,600,000 ducats ; from Italy, in the same year, 3,000,000 ducats' worth of silk, raw and manufactured, of camelot and gold stuffs, were imported. The imports in German and French wines amounted to 2,500,000 ducats; in cereals from the Baltic to 1,500,000 ducats. In 1556 the Italian Luigi Guicciardini valued the English wool importedto the Netherlands at 250,000 ducats, the cloth and other stuffs at more than 5,000,000 ducats. In 1556, also, cargoes of Spanish wool to the value of 600,000 ducats were imported to Bruges. But what specially excited the wonder of foreigners was the fact that this commercial activity and prosperity was not confined to single towns, but was diffused through all the provinces. ' The whole country,' wrote the Venetian Cavalli, ' is alive with commerce an...