Some of the company were much incensed at this treatment, but Brederode, taking it good-humoredly, said, “that he and his friends had no objection to the name, since they were ready at any time to become beggars for the service of their king and country.” This witty sally was received by the company with great applause, who shouted, “_Vivent les Gueux!_”—“long live the beggars!” Brederode, finding the jest took so well, left the room, and soon returned with a beggar’s wallet and a wooden bowl, such as were used by the mendicant fraternity in the Netherlands. Then pledging the company in a bumper, he swore to devote his life and fortune to the cause. The wallet and the bowl went round the table, and as each of the merry guests drank, the shout arose, “_Vivent les Gueux!_” In every language in which the history of these acts has been recorded, the French term, Gueux, is employed to designate this party of malcontents in the Netherlands.
The league now adopted the dress and symbols of mendicants. They affected their garments as a substitute for their family liveries, dressing their retainers in the ash-gray habiliments of the begging friars. Wooden bowls, spoons, and knives became in great request, though they were richly inlaid with silver, according to the wealth of the possessor. Pilgrims’ staffs were carried, elaborately carved. Medals resembling those stuck by the beggars in their bonnets were worn as a badge. The “Gueux penny,” as it was called, a gold or silver coin, was hung from the neck, bearing on one side the effigy of Philip, with the inscription, “_Fideles au roi_,” and on the other, two hands grasping a beggar’s wallet, and the words, “_jusques a porter la besace_,”—“Faithful to the king, even to carrying the wallet.” The war-cry of “_Vivent les Gueux_” soon resounded through the Netherlands.
[Illustration: DESTROYING STATUES, ETC., IN THE CATHEDRAL AT ANTWERP.]
Philip paid little or no attention to the frequent appeals of Margaret, his regent, that he should come to some concessions which should satisfy the people and bring the rebellion to an end. But while Philip was procrastinating, the Iconoclasts rose in fury, and inspired by a false zeal, committed many terrible, sacrilegious outrages, which cast dishonor upon the upholders of the Reformation. These Iconoclasts, or image-breakers, were simply armed mobs of ignorant people, who imagined they were doing a service to God by breaking into the Catholic churches, and ruthlessly destroying everything they could lay their hands on. Prescott thus describes the destruction caused by this band of rioters in Antwerp:—