Belgium would have become at once a constituent portion of a great independent national realm, instead of languishing until our own century, the dependency of a distant and a foreign metropolis.

Nevertheless, as the Antwerpers were not disposed to make themselves martyrs, it was something that they escaped the nameless horrors which had often alighted upon cities subjected to an enraged soldiery.

It redounds to the eternal honour of Alexander Farnese--when the fate of Naarden and Haarlem and Maestricht, in the days of Alva, and of Antwerp itself in the horrible "Spanish fury," is remembered--that there were no scenes of violence and outrage in the populous and wealthy city, which was at length at his mercy after having defied him so long.
Civil and religious liberty were trampled in the dust, commerce and manufactures were destroyed, the most valuable portion of the citizens sent into hopeless exile, but the remaining inhabitants were not butchered in cold blood.
The treaty was signed on the 17th August.

Antwerp was to return to its obedience.

There was to be an entire amnesty and oblivion for the past, without a single exception.