The foundations of the Dutch Republic may have been laid at Brill, but it was the moral support of Flushing that established them.
The date of the capture of Brill was April 1st, and Alva, who was then at Brussels, suffered tortures from the Belgian wits.

The word Brill, by a happy chance, signifies spectacles, and a couplet was sung to the effect that On April Fool's Day Duke Alva's spectacles were stolen away; while, says Motley, a caricature was circulated depicting Alva's spectacles being removed from his nose by De la Marck, while the Duke uttered his habitual comment "'Tis nothing.

'Tis nothing." What, however, began as little more than the desperate deed of some hungry pirates, to satisfy their immediate needs, was soon turned into a very far-reaching "something," by the action of Flushing, whose burghers, under the Seigneur de Herpt, on hearing the news of the rebellion of Brill, drove the Spanish garrison from the town.

A number of Spanish ships chancing to arrive on the same day, bringing reinforcements, were just in time to find the town in arms.

Had they landed, the whole revolt might have been quelled, but a drunken loafer of the town, in return for a pot of beer, offered to fire a gun at the fleet from the ramparts.