Especially in critical times, discipline, unity, and enthusiasm make headway against the deadly hatred of enemies and the deadlier apathy and timidity of the mass of mankind.

It is true that the methods of the preachers often aroused opposition.
[Sidenote: Iconoclasm] The zeal of the Calvinists, inflamed by oppression and encouraged by the weakness of the government, burst into an iconoclastic riot, [Sidenote: August 11, 1566] first among the unemployed at Armentieres, but spreading rapidly to Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, and then to the northern provinces, Holland and Zeeland.

The English agent at Brussels wrote: "Coming into Oure Lady Church, yt looked like hell wher were above 1000 torches brannyng and syche a noise as yf heven and erth had gone together with fallyng of images and fallyng down of costly works." Books and manuscripts as well as pictures were destroyed.

The cry "Long live the Beggars" resounded from one end of the land to the {257} other.

But withal there was no pillage and no robbery.