He insisted that the community of Brussels should lay down their arms, and resume their ordinary handicrafts.

He demanded that the Prince of Orange should be made to execute the Ghent treaty; to suppress the exercise of the Reformed religion in Harlem, Schoonhoven, and other places; to withdraw his armed vessels from their threatening stations, and to restore Nieuport, unjustly detained by him.

Should the Prince persist in his obstinacy, Don John summoned them to take arms against him, and to support their lawful Governor.

He, moreover, required the immediate restitution of Antwerp citadel, and the release of Treslong from prison.
Although, regarded from the Spanish point of view, such demands might seem reasonable, it was also natural that their audacity should astonish the estates.

That the man who had violated so openly the Ghent treaty should rebuke the Prince for his default--that the man who had tampered with the German mercenaries until they were on the point of making another Antwerp Fury, should now claim the command over them and all other troops--that the man who had attempted to gain Antwerp citadel by a base stratagem should now coolly demand its restoration, seemed to them the perfection of insolence.