ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1576, mutinous Spanish troops wrought mayhem in the loyalist provinces of Flanders and Brabant. The ensuing panic was aggravated because the Council of State, which had taken over the government after the sudden death of Requesens, was badly divided. In this crisis, the States of Brabant took matters into its own hands: it raised troops to protect Brussels from the mutineers and in early September it summoned the States General on its own authority. Meanwhile, seemingly at the instigation of William of Orange and the States of Holland, all the members of the Council of State in Brussels, except the Spaniard Jeronimo de Roda, who got away to Antwerp, were arrested.1 Until the arrival of Don John as viceroy in November, de Roda saw himself as the interim repository of royal authority in the Low Countries, and it was he who kept the King abreast of the worsening constitutional crisis.
