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Title: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1567
Author: John Lothrop Motley
Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4814]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on March 19, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUTCH REPUBLIC, 1567 ***
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MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, PG EDITION, VOLUME 14.
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
By John Lothrop Motley
1855
1567 [Part III., ALVA, CHAPTER 1.]
Continued dissensions in the Spanish cabinet--Ruy Gomez and Alva--
Conquest of the Netherlands entrusted to the Duke--Birth, previous
career and character of Alva--Organization of the invading army--
Its march to the provinces--Complaints of Duchess Margaret--Alva
receives deputations on the frontier--Interview between the Duke and
Egmont--Reception of Alva by the Duchess of Parma--Circular letters
to the cities requiring their acceptance of garrisons--Margaret's
secret correspondence--Universal apprehension--Keys of the great
cities demanded by Alva--Secret plans of the government, arranged
before the Duke's departure--Arrest of Orange, Egmont, Horn, and
others, determined upon--Stealthy course of the government towards
them--Infatuation of Egmont--Warnings addressed to him by De Billy
and others--Measures to entrap Count Horn--Banquet of the Grand
Prior--The Grand Prior's warning to Egmont--Evil counsels of
Noircarmes--Arrests of Egmont, Horn, Bakkerzeel and Straalen--
Popular consternation--Petulant conduct of Duchess Margaret--
Characteristic comments of Granvelle--His secret machinations and
disclaimers--Berghen and Montigny--Last moments of Marquis Berghen--
Perfidy of Ruy Gomez--Establishment of the "Blood-Council"--Its
leading features--Insidious behavior of Viglius--Secret
correspondence, concerning the President, between Philip and Alva--
Members of the "Blood-Council"--Portraits of Vargas and Hessels--
Mode of proceeding adopted by the council--Wholesale executions--
Despair in the provinces--The resignation of Duchess Margaret
accepted--Her departure from the Netherlands--Renewed civil war in
France--Death of Montmorency--Auxiliary troops sent by Alva to
France--Erection of Antwerp citadel--Description of the citadel.
The armed invasion of the Netherlands was the necessary consequence of
all which had gone before. That the inevitable result had been so long
deferred lay rather in the incomprehensible tardiness of Philip's
character than in the circumstances of the case. Never did a monarch
hold so steadfastly to a deadly purpose, or proceed so languidly and with
so much circumvolution to his goal. The mask of benignity, of possible
clemency, was now thrown off, but the delusion of his intended visit to
the provinces was still maintained. He assured the Regent that he should
be governed by her advice, and as she had made all needful preparations
to receive him in Zeland, that it would be in Zeland he should arrive.
The same two men among Philip's advisers were prominent as at an earlier
day--the Prince of Eboli and the Duke of Alva. They still represented
entirely opposite ideas, and in character, temper, and history, each was
the reverse of the other. The policy of the Prince was pacific and
temporizing; that of the Duke uncompromising and ferocious. Ruy Gomez
was disposed to prevent, if possible, the armed mission of Alva, and he
now openly counselled the King to fulfil his long-deferred promise, and
to make his appearance in person before his rebellious subjects. The
jealousy and hatred which existed between the Prince and the Duke--
between the man of peace and the man of wrath--were constantly exploding,
even in the presence of the King. The wrangling in the council was
incessant. Determined, if possible; to prevent the elevation of his
rival, the favorite was even for a moment disposed to ask for the command
of the army himself. There was something ludicrous in the notion, that
a man whose life had been pacific, and who trembled at the noise of arms,
should seek to supersede the terrible Alva, of whom his eulogists
asserted, with, Castilian exaggeration, that the very name of fear
inspired him with horror. But there was a limit beyond which the
influence of Anna de Mendoza and her husband did not extend. Philip was
not to be driven to the Netherlands against his will, nor to be prevented
from assigning the command of the army to the most appropriate man in
Europe for his purpose.
It was determined at last that the Netherland heresy should be conquered
by force of arms. The invasion resembled both a crusade against the
infidel, and a treasure-hunting foray into the auriferous Indies,
achievements by which Spanish chivalry had so often illustrated itself.
The banner of the cross was to be replanted upon the conquered
battlements of three hundred infidel cities, and a torrent of wealth,
richer than ever flowed from Mexican or Peruvian mines, was to flow into
the royal treasury from the perennial fountains of confiscation. Who so
fit to be the Tancred and the Pizarro of this bicolored expedition as the
Duke of Alva, the man who had been devoted from his earliest childhood,
and from his father's grave, to hostility against unbelievers, and who
had prophesied that treasure would flow in a stream, a yard deep, from
the Netherlands as soon as the heretics began to meet with their deserts.
An army of chosen troops was forthwith collected, by taking the four
legions, or terzios, of Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and Lombardy, and
filling their places in Italy by fresh levies. About ten thousand picked
and veteran soldiers were thus obtained, of which the Duke of Alva was
appointed general-in-chief.
Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was now in his sixtieth
year. He was the most successful and experienced general of Spain, or
of Europe. No man had studied more deeply, or practised more constantly,
the military science. In the most important of all arts at that epoch he
was the most consummate artist. In the only honorable profession of the
age, he was the most thorough and the most pedantic professor. Since the
days of Demetrius Poliorcetes, no man had besieged so many cities. Since
the days of Fabius Cunctator; no general had avoided so many battles, and
no soldier, courageous as he was, ever attained to a more sublime
indifference to calumny or depreciation. Having proved in his boyhood,
at Fontarabia, and in his maturity: at Muhlberg, that he could exhibit
heroism and headlong courage; when necessary, he could afford to look
with contempt upon the witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally
perpetrated at his expense. Conscious of holding his armies in his hand,
by the power of an unrivalled discipline, and the magic of a name
illustrated by a hundred triumphs, he, could bear with patience and
benevolence the murmurs of his soldiers when their battles were denied
them.
He was born in 1508, of a family which boasted, imperial descent. A
Palaeologus, brother of a Byzantine emperor, had conquered the city of
Toledo, and transmitted its appellation as a family name. The father of
Ferdinando, Don Garcia, had been slain on the isle of Gerbes, in battle
with the Moors, when his son was but four years of age. The child was
brought up by his grandfather, Don Frederic, and trained from his
tenderest infancy to arms. Hatred to the infidel, and a determination to
avenge his father's blood; crying to him from a foreign grave, were the
earliest of his instincts. As a youth he was distinguished for his
prowess. His maiden sword was fleshed at Fontarabia, where, although but
sixteen years of age, he was considered, by his constancy in hardship,
by his brilliant and desperate courage, and by the example of military
discipline which he afforded to the troops, to have contributed in no
small degree to the success of the Spanish arms.
In 1530, he accompanied the Emperor in his campaign against the Turk.
Charles, instinctively recognizing the merit of the youth who was
destined to be the life-long companion of his toils and glories,
distinguished him with his favor at the opening of his career. Young,
brave, and enthusiastic, Ferdinand de Toledo at this period was as
interesting a hero as ever illustrated the pages of Castilian romance.
His mad ride from Hungary to Spain and back again, accomplished in
seventeen days, for the sake of a brief visit to his newly-married wife,
is not the least attractive episode in the history of an existence which
was destined to be so dark and sanguinary. In 1535, he accompanied the
Emperor on his memorable expedition to Tunis. In 1546 and 1547 he was
generalissimo in the war against the Smalcaldian league. His most
brilliant feat of arms-perhaps the most brilliant exploit of the
Emperor's reign--was the passage of the Elbe and the battle of Muhlberg,
accomplished in spite of Maximilian's bitter and violent reproaches, and
the tremendous possibilities of a defeat. That battle had finished the
war. The gigantic and magnanimous John Frederic, surprised at his
devotions in the church, fled in dismay, leaving his boots behind him,
which for their superhuman size, were ridiculously said afterwards to be
treasured among the trophies of the Toledo house.
[Hist. du Due d'Albe, i. 274. Brantome, Hom. Illust., etc.
(ch. v.), says that one of the boots was "large enough to hold a
camp bedstead," p. 11. I insert the anecdote only as a specimen of
the manner in which similar absurdities, both of great and, of
little consequence, are perpetuated by writers in every land and
age. The armor of the noble-hearted and unfortunate John Frederic
may still be seen in Dresden. Its size indicates a man very much
above the average height, while the external length of the iron
shoe, on-the contrary, is less than eleven inches.]
The rout was total. "I came, I saw, and God conquered," said the
Emperor, in pious parody of his immortal predecessor's epigram.
Maximilian, with a thousand apologies for his previous insults, embraced
the heroic Don Ferdinand over and over again, as, arrayed in a plain suit
of blue armor, unadorned save with streaks of his enemies' blood, he
returned from pursuit of the fugitives. So complete and so sudden was
the victory, that it was found impossible to account for it, save on the
ground of miraculous interposition. Like Joshua, in the vale of Ajalon,
Don Ferdinand was supposed to have commanded the sun to stand still for a
season, and to have been obeyed. Otherwise, how could the passage of the
river, which was only concluded at six in the evening, and the complete
overthrow of the Protestant forces, have all been accomplished within the
narrow space of an April twilight? The reply of the Duke to Henry the
Second of France, who questioned him subsequently upon the subject, is
well known. "Your Majesty, I was too much occupied that evening with
what was taking place on the earth beneath, to pay much heed to the
evolutions of the heavenly bodies." Spared as he had been by his good
fortune from taking any part in the Algerine expedition, or in witnessing
the ignominious retreat from Innspruck, he was obliged to submit to the
intercalation of the disastrous siege of Metz in the long history of his
successes. Doing the duty of a field-marshal and a sentinel, supporting
his army by his firmness and his discipline when nothing else could have
supported them, he was at last enabled, after half the hundred thousand
men with whom Charles had begun the siege had been sacrificed, to induce
his imperial master to raise the siege before the remaining fifty
thousand had been frozen or starved to death.
The culminating career of Alva seemed to have closed in the mist which
gathered around the setting star of the empire. Having accompanied
Philip to England in 1554, on his matrimonial-expedition, he was destined
in the following years, as viceroy and generalissimo of Italy, to be
placed in a series of false positions. A great captain engaged in a
little war, the champion of the cross in arms against the successor of
St. Peter, he had extricated himself, at last, with his usual adroitness,
but with very little glory. To him had been allotted the mortification,
to another the triumph. The lustre of his own name seemed to sink in the
ocean while that of a hated rival, with new spangled ore, suddenly
"flamed in the forehead of the morning sky." While he had been paltering
with a dotard, whom he was forbidden to crush, Egmont had struck down the
chosen troops of France, and conquered her most illustrious commanders.
Here was the unpardonable crime which could only be expiated by the blood
of the victor. Unfortunately for his rival, the time was now approaching
when the long-deferred revenge was to be satisfied.
On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age.
As a disciplinarian he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. A
spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood, and this was, perhaps,
in the eye of humanity, his principal virtue. Time and myself are two,
was a frequent observation of Philip, and his favorite general considered
the maxim as applicable to war as to politics. Such were his qualities
as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither experience nor
talent. As a man his character was simple. He did not combine a great
variety of vices, but those which he had were colossal, and he possessed
no virtues. He was neither lustful nor intemperate, but his professed
eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world has agreed that
such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient vindictiveness and
universal bloodthirstiness, were never found in a savage beast of the
forest, and but rarely in a human bosom. His history was now to show
that his previous thrift of human life was not derived from any love of
his kind. Personally he was stern and overbearing. As difficult of
access as Philip himself, he was even more haughty to those who were
admitted to his presence. He addressed every one with the depreciating
second person plural. Possessing the right of being covered in the
presence of the Spanish monarch, he had been with difficulty brought to
renounce it before the German Emperor. He was of an illustrious family;
but his territorial possessions were not extensive. His duchy was a
small one, furnishing him with not more than fourteen thousand crowns of
annual income, and with four hundred soldiers. He had, however, been a
thrifty financier all his life, never having been without a handsome sum
of ready money at interest. Ten years before his arrival in the
Netherlands, he was supposed to have already increased his income to
forty thousand a year by the proceeds of his investments at Antwerp.
As already intimated, his military character was sometimes profoundly
misunderstood. He was often considered rather a pedantic than a
practical commander, more capable to discourse of battles than to gain
them. Notwithstanding that his long life had been an, almost unbroken
campaign, the ridiculous accusation of timidity was frequently made
against him. A gentleman at the court of the Emperor Charles once
addressed a letter to the Duke with the title of "General of his
Majesty's armies in the Duchy of Milan in time of peace, and major-domo
of the household in the time of war." It was said that the lesson did
the Duke good, but that he rewarded very badly the nobleman who gave it,
having subsequently caused his head to be taken off. In general,
however, Alva manifested a philosophical contempt for the opinions
expressed concerning his military fame, and was especially disdainful
of criticism expressed by his own soldiers. "Recollect," said he, at a
little later period, to Don John of Austria, "that the first foes with
whom one has to contend are one's own troops; with their clamors for an
engagement at this moment, and--their murmurs, about results at another;
with their 'I thought that the battle should be fought;' or, 'it was my,
opinion that the occasion ought not to be lost.' Your highness will have
opportunity enough to display valor, and will never be weak enough to be
conquered by the babble of soldiers."
In person he was tall, thin, erect, with a small head, a long visage,
lean yellow cheek, dark twinkling eyes, a dust complexion, black
bristling hair, and a long sable-silvered beard, descending in two waving
streams upon his breast.
Such being the design, the machinery was well selected. The best man in
Europe to lead the invading force was placed at the head of ten thousand
picked veterans. The privates in this exquisite little army, said the
enthusiastic connoisseur Brantome, who travelled post into Lorraine
expressly to see them on their march, all wore engraved or gilded armor,
and were in every respect equipped like captains. They were the first
who carried muskets, a weapon which very much astonished the Flemings
when it first rattled in their ears. The musketeers, he observed, might
have been mistaken, for princes, with such agreeable and graceful
arrogance did they present themselves. Each was attended by his servant
or esquire, who carried his piece for him, except in battle, and all were
treated with extreme deference by the rest of the army, as if they had
been officers. The four regiments of Lombardy, Sardinia, Sicily, and
Naples, composed a total of not quite nine thousand of the best foot
soldiers in Europe. They were commanded respectively by Don Sancho de
Lodiono, Don Gonzalo de Bracamonte, Julien Romero, and Alfonso de Ulloa,
all distinguished and experienced generals. The cavalry, amounting to
about twelve hundred; was under the command of the natural son of the
Duke, Don Ferdinando de Toledo, Prior of the Knights of St. John.
Chiapin Vitelli, Marquis of Cetona, who had served the King in many a
campaign, was appointed Marechal de camp, and Gabriel Cerbelloni was
placed in command of the artillery. On the way the Duke received,
as a present from the Duke of Savoy, the services of the distinguished
engineer, Pacheco, or Paciotti, whose name was to be associated with the
most celebrated citadel of the Netherlands; and whose dreadful fate was
to be contemporaneous with the earliest successes of the liberal party.
With an army thus perfect, on a small scale, in all its departments, and
furnished, in addition, with a force of two thousand prostitutes, as
regularly enrolled, disciplined, and distributed as the cavalry or the
artillery, the Duke embarked upon his momentous enterprise, on the 10th
of May, at Carthagena. Thirty-seven galleys, under command of Prince
Andrea Doria, brought the principal part of the force to Genoa, the Duke
being delayed a few days at Nice by an attack of fever. On the 2d of
June, the army was mustered at Alexandria de Palla, and ordered to
rendezvous again at San Ambrosio at the foot of the Alps. It was then
directed to make its way over Mount Cenis and through Savoy; Burgundy,
and Lorraine, by a regularly arranged triple movement. The second
division was each night to encamp on the spot which had been occupied
upon the previous night by the vanguard, and the rear was to place itself
on the following night in the camp of the corps de bataille. Thus
coiling itself along almost in a single line by slow and serpentine
windings, with a deliberate, deadly, venomous purpose, this army, which
was to be the instrument of Philip's long deferred vengeance, stole
through narrow mountain pass and tangled forest. So close and intricate
were many of the defiles through which the journey led them that, had one
tithe of the treason which they came to punish, ever existed, save in the
diseased imagination of their monarch, not one man would have been left
to tell the tale. Egmont, had he really been the traitor and the
conspirator he was assumed to be, might have easily organized the means
of cutting off the troops before they could have effected their entrance
into the country which they had doomed to destruction. His military
experience, his qualifications for a daring stroke, his great popularity,
and the intense hatred entertained for Alva, would have furnished him
with a sufficient machinery for the purpose.
Twelve days' march carried the army through Burgundy, twelve more through
Lorraine. During the whole of the journey they were closely accompanied
by a force of cavalry and infantry, ordered upon this service by the King
of France, who, for fear of exciting a fresh Huguenot demonstration, had
refused the Spaniards a passage through his dominions. This
reconnoitring army kept pace with them like their shadow, and watched all
their movements. A force of six thousand Swiss, equally alarmed and
uneasy at the progress of the troops, hovered likewise about their
flanks, without, however, offering any impediment to their advance.
Before the middle of August they had reached Thionville, on the Luxemburg
frontier, having on the last day marched a distance of two leagues
through a forest, which seemed expressly arranged to allow a small
defensive force to embarrass and destroy an invading army. No
opposition, however, was attempted, and the Spanish soldiers encamped at
last within the territory of the Netherlands, having accomplished their
adventurous journey in entire safety, and under perfect discipline.
The Duchess had in her secret letters to Philip continued to express her
disapprobation of the enterprise thus committed to Alva, She had bitterly
complained that now when the country had been pacified by her efforts,
another should be sent to reap all the glory, or perhaps to undo all that
she had so painfully and so successfully done. She stated to her
brother, in most unequivocal language, that the name of Alva was odious
enough to make the whole Spanish nation detested in the Netherlands. She
could find no language sufficiently strong to express her surprise that
the King should have decided upon a measure likely to be attended with
such fatal consequences without consulting her on the subject, and in
opposition to what had been her uniform advice. She also wrote
personally to Alva, imploring, commanding, and threatening, but with
equally ill success. The Duke knew too well who was sovereign of the
Netherlands now; his master's sister or himself. As to the effects of
his armed invasion upon the temper of the provinces, he was supremely
indifferent. He came as a conqueror not as a mediator. "I have tamed
people of iron in my day," said he, contemptuously, "shall I not easily
crush these men of butter?"
At Thionville he was, however, officially waited upon by Berlaymont and
Noircarmes, on the part of the Regent. He at this point, moreover, began
to receive deputations from various cities, bidding him a hollow and
trembling welcome, and deprecating his displeasure for any thing in the
past which might seem offensive. To all such embassies he replied in
vague and conventional language; saying, however, to his confidential
attendants: I am here, so much is certain, whether I am welcome or not is
to me a matter of little consequence. At Tirlemont, on the 22d August,
he was met by Count Egmont, who had ridden forth from Brussels to show
him a becoming respect, as the representative of his sovereign, The Count
was accompanied by several other noblemen, and brought to the Duke a
present of several beautiful horses. Alva received him, however, but
coldly, for he was unable at first to adjust the mask to his countenance
as adroitly as was necessary. Behold the greatest of all the heretics,
he observed to his attendants, as soon as the nobleman's presence was
announced, and in a voice loud enough for him to hear.
Even after they had exchanged salutations, he addressed several remarks
to him in a half jesting, half biting tone, saying among other things,
that his countship might have spared him the trouble of making this long
journey in his old age. There were other observations in a similar
strain which might have well aroused the suspicion of any man not
determined, like Egmont, to continue blind and deaf. After a brief
interval, however, Alva seems to have commanded himself. He passed his
arm lovingly over that stately neck, which he had already devoted to the
block, and the Count having resolved beforehand to place himself, if
possible, upon amicable terms with the new Viceroy--the two rode along
side by side in friendly conversation, followed by the regiment of
infantry and three companies of light horse, which belonged to the Duke's
immediate command. Alva, still attended by Egmont, rode soon afterwards
through the Louvain gate into Brussels, where they separated for a
season. Lodgings had been taken for the Duke at the house of a certain
Madame de Jasse, in the neighborhood of Egmont's palace. Leaving here
the principal portion of his attendants, the Captain-General, without
alighting, forthwith proceeded to the palace to pay his respects to the
Duchess of Parma.
For three days the Regent had been deliberating with her council as to
the propriety of declining any visit from the man whose presence she
justly considered a disgrace and an insult to herself. This being the
reward of her eight years' devotion to her brother's commands; to be
superseded by a subject, and one too who came to carry out a policy which
she had urgently deprecated, it could hardly be expected of the Emperor's
daughter that she should graciously submit to the indignity, and receive
her successor with a smiling countenance. In consequence, however, of
the submissive language with which the Duke had addressed her in his
recent communications, offering with true Castilian but empty courtesy,
to place his guards, his army, and himself at her feet, she had consented
to receive his visit with or without his attendants.
On his appearance in the court-yard, a scene of violent altercation and
almost of bloodshed took place between his body-guard and the archers of
the Regent's household, who were at last, with difficulty, persuaded to
allow the mercenaries of the hated Captain-General to pass. Presenting
himself at three o'clock in the afternoon, after these not very
satisfactory preliminaries, in the bedchamber of the Duchess, where it
was her habit to grant confidential audiences, he met, as might easily be
supposed, with a chilling reception: The Duchess, standing motionless in
the centre of the apartment, attended by Berlaymont, the Duke of
Aerachot, and Count Egmont, acknowledged his salutations with calm
severity. Neither she nor any one of her attendants advanced a step to
meet him. The Duke took off his hat, but she, calmly recognizing his
right as a Spanish grandee, insisted upon his remaining covered.
A stiff and formal conversation of half an hour's duration then ensued,
all parties remaining upon their feet. The Duke, although respectful;
found it difficult to conceal his indignation and his haughty sense of
approaching triumph. Margaret was cold, stately, and forbidding,
disguising her rage and her mortification under a veil of imperial pride.
Alva, in a letter to Philip, describing the interview, assured his
Majesty that he had treated the Duchess with as much deference as
he could have shown to the Queen, but it is probable, from other
contemporaneous accounts, that an ill-disguised and even angry arrogance
was at times very visible in his demeanor. The state council had advised
the Duchess against receiving him until he had duly exhibited his powers.
This ceremony had been waived, but upon being questioned by the Duchess
at this interview as to their nature and extent, he is reported to have
coolly answered that he really did not exactly remember, but that he
would look them over, and send her information at his earliest
convenience.
The next day, however, his commission was duly exhibited.
In this document, which bore date 31st January, 1567, Philip appointed
him to be Captain-General "in correspondence with his Majesty's dear
sister of Parma, who was occupied with other matters belonging to the
government," begged the Duchess to co-operate with him and to command
obedience for him, and ordered all the cities of the Netherlands to
receive such garrisons as he should direct.
At the official interview between Alva and Madame de Parma, at which
these powers were produced, the necessary preliminary arrangements were
made regarding the Spanish troops, which were now to be immediately
quartered in the principal cities. The Duke, however, informed the
Regent that as these matters were not within her province, he should take
the liberty of arranging them with the authorities, without troubling her
in the matter, and would inform her of the result of his measures at
their next interview, which was to take place on the 26th August.
Circular letters signed by Philip, which Alva had brought with him, were
now despatched to the different municipal bodies of the country. In
these the cities were severally commanded to accept the garrisons, and to
provide for the armies whose active services the King hoped would not be
required, but which he had sent beforehand to prepare a peaceful entrance
for himself. He enjoined the most absolute obedience to the Duke of Alva
until his own arrival, which was to be almost immediate. These letters
were dated at Madrid on the 28th February, and were now accompanied by a
brief official circular, signed by Margaret of Parma, in which she
announced the arrival of her dear cousin of Alva, and demanded
unconditional submission to his authority.
Having thus complied with these demands of external and conventional
propriety, the indignant Duchess unbosomed herself, in her private
Italian letters to her brother, of the rage which had been hitherto
partially suppressed. She reiterated her profound regret that Philip
had not yet accepted the resignation which she had so recently and so
earnestly offered. She disclaimed all jealousy of the supreme powers now
conferred upon Alva, but thought that his Majesty might have allowed her
to leave the country before the Duke arrived with an authority which was
so extraordinary, as well as so humiliating to herself. Her honor might
thus have been saved. She was pained to perceive that she was like to
furnish a perpetual example to all others, who considering the manner in
which she had been treated by the King, would henceforth have but little
inducement to do their duty. At no time, on no occasion, could any
person ever render him such services as hers had been. For nine years
she had enjoyed not a moment of repose. If the King had shown her but
little gratitude, she was consoled by the thought that she had satisfied
her God, herself, and the world. She had compromised her health, perhaps
her life, and now that she had pacified the country, now that the King
was more absolute, more powerful than ever before, another was sent to
enjoy the fruit of her labors and her sufferings.
The Duchess made no secret of her indignation at being thus superseded
and as she considered the matter, outraged. She openly avowed her
displeasure. She was at times almost beside herself with rage. There
was universal sympathy with her emotions, for all hated the Duke, and
shuddered at the arrival of the Spaniards. The day of doom for all the
crimes which had ever been committed in the course of ages, seemed now to
have dawned upon the Netherlands. The sword which had so long been
hanging over them, seemed now about to descend. Throughout the
provinces, there was but one feeling of cold and hopeless dismay.
Those who still saw a possibility of effecting their escape from the
fated land, swarmed across the frontier. All foreign merchants deserted
the great marts. The cities became as still as if the plague-banner had
been unfurled on every house-top.
Meantime the Captain-General proceeded methodically with his work.
He distributed his troops through Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp, and other
principal cities. As a measure of necessity and mark of the last
humiliation, he required the municipalities to transfer their keys to
his keeping. The magistrates of Ghent humbly remonstrated against the
indignity, and Egmont was imprudent enough to make himself the mouth-
piece of their remonstrance, which, it is needless to add, was
unsuccessful. Meantime his own day of reckoning had arrived.
As already observed, the advent of Alva at the head of a foreign army was
the natural consequence of all which had gone before. The delusion of
the royal visit was still maintained, and the affectation of a possible
clemency still displayed, while the monarch sat quietly in his cabinet
without a remote intention of leaving Spain, and while the messengers of
his accumulated and long-concealed wrath were already descending upon
their prey. It was the deliberate intention of Philip, when the Duke
was despatched to the Netherlands, that all the leaders of the anti-
inquisition party, and all who had, at any time or in any way, implicated
themselves in opposition to the government, or in censure of its
proceedings, should be put to death. It was determined that the
provinces should be subjugated to the absolute domination of the council
of Spain, a small body of foreigners sitting at the other end of Europe,
a junta in which Netherlanders were to have no voice and exercise no
influence. The despotic government of the Spanish and Italian
possessions was to be extended to these Flemish territories, which were
thus to be converted into the helpless dependencies of a foreign and an
absolute crown. There was to be a re-organization of the inquisition,
upon the same footing claimed for it before the outbreak of the troubles,
together with a re-enactment and vigorous enforcement of the famous
edicts against heresy.
Such was the scheme recommended by Granvelle and Espinosa, and to be
executed by Alva. As part and parcel of this plan, it was also arranged
at secret meetings at the house of Espinosa, before the departure of the
Duke, that all the seigniors against whom the Duchess Margaret had made
so many complaints, especially the Prince of Orange, with the Counts
Egmont, Horn, and Hoogstraaten, should be immediately arrested and
brought to chastisement. The Marquis Berghen and the Baron Montigny,
being already in Spain, could be dealt with at pleasure. It was also
decided that the gentlemen implicated in the confederacy or compromise,
should at once be proceeded against for high treason, without any regard
to the promise of pardon granted by the Duchess.
The general features of the great project having been thus mapped out,
a few indispensable preliminaries were at once executed. In order that
Egmont, Horn, and other distinguished victims might not take alarm, and
thus escape the doom deliberately arranged for them, royal assurances
were despatched to the Netherlands, cheering their despondency and
dispelling their doubts. With his own hand Philip wrote the letter, full
of affection and confidence, to Egmont, to which allusion has already
been made. He wrote it after Alva had left Madrid upon his mission of
vengeance. The same stealthy measures were pursued with regard to
others. The Prince of Orange was not capable of falling into the royal
trap, however cautiously baited. Unfortunately he could not communicate
his wisdom to his friends.
It is difficult to comprehend so very sanguine a temperament as that to
which Egmont owed his destruction. It was not the Prince of Orange alone
who had prophesied his doom. Warnings had come to the Count from every
quarter, and they were now frequently repeated. Certainly he was not
without anxiety, but he had made his decision; determined to believe
in the royal word, and in the royal gratitude for his services rendered,
not only against Montmorency and De Thermes, but against the heretics of
Flanders. He was, however, much changed. He had grown prematurely old.
At forty-six years his hair was white, and he never slept without pistols
under his pillow. Nevertheless he affected, and sometimes felt, a light-
heartedness which surprised all around him. The Portuguese gentleman
Robles, Seigneur de Billy, who had returned early in the summer from
Spain; whither he had been sent upon a confidential mission by Madame de
Parma, is said to have made repeated communications to Egmont as to the
dangerous position in which he stood. Immediately after his arrival in
Brussels he had visited the Count, then confined to his house by an
injury caused by the fall of his horse. "Take care to get well very
fast," said De Billy, "for there are very bad stories told about you in
Spain." Egmont laughed heartily at the observation, as if, nothing could
well be more absurd than such a warning. His friend--for De Billy is
said to have felt a real attachment to the Count--persisted in his
prophecies, telling him that "birds in the field sang much more sweetly
than those in cages," and that he would do well to abandon the country
before the arrival of Alva.
These warnings were repeated almost daily by the same gentleman, and
by others, who were more and more astonished at Egmont's infatuation.
Nevertheless, he had disregarded their admonitions, and had gone forth
to meet the Duke at Tirlemont. Even then he might have seen, in the
coldness of his first reception, and in the disrespectful manner of the
Spanish soldiers, who not only did not at first salute him, but who
murmured audibly that he was a Lutheran and traitor, that he was not so
great a favorite with the government at Madrid as he desired to be.
After the first few moments, however, Alva's manner had changed, while
Chiappin Vitelli, Gabriel de Serbelloni, and other principal officers,
received the Count with great courtesy, even upon his first appearance.
The grand prior, Ferdinando de Toledo, natural son of the Duke, and
already a distinguished soldier, seems to have felt a warm and unaffected
friendship for Egmont, whose brilliant exploits in the field had excited
his youthful admiration, and of whose destruction he was, nevertheless,
compelled to be the unwilling instrument. For a few days, accordingly,
after the arrival of the new Governor-General all seemed to be going
smoothly. The grand prior and Egmont became exceedingly intimate,
passing their time together in banquets, masquerades, and play, as
joyously as if the merry days which had succeeded the treaty of Cateau
Cambreais were returned. The Duke, too, manifested the most friendly
dispositions, taking care to send him large presents of Spanish and
Italian fruits, received frequently by the government couriers.
Lapped in this fatal security, Egmont not only forgot his fears, but
unfortunately succeeded in inspiring Count Horn with a portion of his
confidence. That gentleman had still remained in his solitary mansion
at Weert, notwithstanding the artful means which had been used to lure
him from that "desert." It is singular that the very same person who,
according to a well-informed Catholic contemporary, had been most eager
to warn Egmont of his danger, had also been the foremost instrument for
effecting the capture of the Admiral. The Seigneur de Billy, on the day
after his arrival from Madrid, had written to Horn, telling him that the
King was highly pleased with his services and character. De Billy also
stated that he had been commissioned by Philip to express distinctly the
royal gratitude for the Count's conduct, adding that his Majesty was
about to visit the Netherlands in August, and would probably be preceded
or accompanied by Baron Montigny.
Alva and his son Don Ferdinando had soon afterwards addressed letters
from Gerverbiller (dated 26th and 27th July) to Count Horn, filled with
expressions of friendship and confidence. The Admiral, who had sent one
of his gentlemen to greet the Duke, now responded from Weert that he was
very sensible of the kindness manifested towards him, but that for
reasons which his secretary Alonzo de la Loo would more fully
communicate, he must for the present beg to be excused from a personal
visit to Brussels. The secretary was received by Alva with extreme
courtesy. The Duke expressed infinite pain that the King had not yet
rewarded Count Horn's services according to their merit, said that a year
before he had told his brother Montigny how very much he was the
Admiral's friend, and begged La Loo to tell his master that he should not
doubt the royal generosity and gratitude. The governor added, that if he
could see the Count in person he could tell him things which would please
him, and which would prove that he had not been forgotten by his friends.
La Loo had afterward a long conversation with the Duke's secretary
Albornoz, who assured him that his master had the greatest affection for
Count Horn, and that since his affairs were so much embarrassed, he might
easily be provided with the post of governor at Milan, or viceroy of
Naples, about to become vacant. The secretary added, that the Duke was
much hurt at receiving no visits from many distinguished nobles whose
faithful friend and servant he was, and that Count Horn ought to visit
Brussels, if not to treat of great affairs, at least to visit the
Captain-General as a friend. "After all this," said honest Alonzo,
"I am going immediately to Weert, to urge his lordship to yield to the
Duke's desires."
This scientific manoeuvring, joined to the urgent representations of
Egmont, at last produced its effect. The Admiral left his retirement at
Weert to fall into the pit which his enemies had been so skilfully
preparing at Brussels. On the night of the 8th September, Egmont
received another most significative and mysterious warning. A Spaniard,
apparently an officer of rank, came secretly into his house, and urged
him solemnly to effect his escape before the morrow. The Countess, who
related the story afterwards, always believed, without being certain,
that the mysterious visitor was Julian Romero, marechal de camp. Egmont,
however, continued as blindly confident as before.
On the following day, September 9th, the grand prior, Don Ferdinando,
gave a magnificent dinner, to which Egmont and Horn, together with
Noircarmes, the Viscount of Ghent, and many other noblemen were invited.
The banquet was enlivened by the music of Alva's own military band,
which the Duke sent to entertain the company. At three o'clock he sent
a message begging the gentlemen, after their dinner should be concluded,
to favor him with their company at his house (the maison de Jassey), as
he wished to consult them concerning the plan of the citadel, which he
proposed erecting at Antwerp.
At this moment, the grand prior who was seated next to Egmont, whispered
in his ear; "Leave this place, Signor Count, instantly; take the fleetest
horse in your stable and make your escape without a moment's delay."
Egmont, much troubled, and remembering the manifold prophecies and
admonitions which he had passed by unheeded, rose from the table and went
into the next room. He was followed by Noircarmes and two other
gentlemen, who had observed his agitation, and were curious as to its
cause. The Count repeated to them the mysterious words just whispered to
him by the grand prior, adding that he was determined to take the advice
without a moment's delay. "Ha! Count," exclaimed Noircarmes, "do not
put lightly such implicit confidence in this stranger who is counselling
you to your destruction. What will the Duke of Alva and all the
Spaniards say of such a precipitate flight? Will they not say that your
Excellency has fled from the consciousness of guilt? Will not your
escape be construed into a confession of high treason."
If these words were really spoken by Noircarmes; and that they were so,
we have the testimony of a Walloon gentleman in constant communication
with Egmont's friends and with the whole Catholic party, they furnish
another proof of the malignant and cruel character of the man. The
advice fixed forever the fate of the vacillating Egmont. He had risen
from table determined to take the advice of a noble-minded Spaniard, who
had adventured his life to save his friend. He now returned in obedience
to the counsel of a fellow-countryman, a Flemish noble, to treat the
well-meant warning with indifference, and to seat himself again at the
last banquet which he was ever to grace with his presence.
At four o'clock, the dinner being finished, Horn and Egmont, accompanied
by the other gentlemen, proceeded to the "Jassy" house, then occupied by
Alva, to take part in the deliberations proposed. They were received by
the Duke with great courtesy. The engineer, Pietro Urbino, soon appeared
and laid upon the table a large parchment containing the plan and
elevation of the citadel to be erected at Antwerp. A warm discussion
upon the subject soon arose, Egmont, Horn, Noircarmes and others,
together with the engineers Urbino and Pacheco, all taking part in the
debate. After a short time, the Duke of Alva left the apartment, on
pretext of a sudden indisposition, leaving the company still warmly
engaged in their argument. The council lasted till near seven in the
evening. As it broke up, Don Sancho d'Avila, captain of the Duke's
guard, requested Egmont to remain for a moment after the rest, as he had
a communication to make to him. After an insignificant remark or two,
the Spanish officer, as soon as the two were alone, requested Egmont to
surrender his sword. The Count, agitated, and notwithstanding every
thing which had gone before, still taken by surprise, scarcely knew what
reply to make. Don Sancho repeated that he had been commissioned to
arrest him, and again demanded his sword. At the same moment the doors
of the adjacent apartment were opened, and Egmont saw himself surrounded
by a company of Spanish musqueteers and halberdmen. Finding himself thus
entrapped, he gave up his sword, saying bitterly, as he did so, that it
had at least rendered some service to the King in times which were past.
He was then conducted to a chamber, in the upper story of the house,
where his temporary prison had been arranged. The windows were
barricaded, the daylight excluded, the whole apartment hung with black.
Here he remained fourteen days (from the 9th to 23d September). During
this period, he was allowed no communication with his friends. His room
was lighted day and night with candles, and he was served in strict
silence by Spanish attendants, and guarded by Spanish soldiers. The
captain of the watch drew his curtain every midnight, and aroused him
from sleep that he might be identified by the relieving officer.
Count Horn was arrested upon the same occasion by Captain Salinas, as he
was proceeding through the court-yard of the house, after the breaking up
of the council. He was confined in another chamber of the mansion, and
met with a precisely similar treatment to that experienced by Egmont.
Upon the 23d September, both were removed under a strong guard to the
castle of Ghent.
On this same day, two other important arrests, included and arranged in
the same program, had been successfully accomplished. Bakkerzeel,
private and confidential secretary of Egmont, and Antony Van Straalen,
the rich and influential burgomaster of Antwerp, were taken almost
simultaneously. At the request of Alva, the burgomaster had been invited
by the Duchess of Parma to repair on business to Brussels. He seemed to
have feared an ambuscade, for as he got into his coach to set forth upon
the journey, he was so muffed in a multiplicity of clothing, that he was
scarcely to be recognized. He was no sooner, however, in the open
country and upon a spot remote from human habitations, than he was
suddenly beset by a band of forty soldiers under command of Don Alberic
Lodron and Don Sancho de Lodrono. These officers had been watching his
movements for many days. The capture of Bakkerzeel was accomplished with
equal adroitness at about the same hour.
Alva, while he sat at the council board with Egmont and Horn, was
secretly informed that those important personages, Bakkerzeel and
Straalen, with the private secretary of the Admiral, Alonzo de la Loo,
in addition, had been thus successfully arrested. He could with
difficulty conceal his satisfaction, and left the apartment immediately
that the trap might be sprung upon the two principal victims of his
treachery. He had himself arranged all the details of these two
important arrests, while his natural son, the Prior Don Ferdinando,
had been compelled to superintend the proceedings. The plot had been
an excellent plot, and was accomplished as successfully as it bad been
sagaciously conceived. None but Spaniards had been employed in any part
of the affair. Officers of high rank in his Majesty's army had performed
the part of spies and policemen with much adroitness, nor was it to be
expected that the duty would seem a disgrace, when the Prior of the
Knights of Saint John was superintendent of the operations, when the
Captain-General of the Netherlands had arranged the whole plan, and when
all, from subaltern to viceroy, had received minute instructions as to
the contemplated treachery from the great chief of the Spanish police,
who sat on the throne of Castile and Aragon.
No sooner were these gentlemen in custody than the secretary Albornoz was
dispatched to the house of Count Horn, and to that of Bakkerzeel, where
all papers were immediately seized, inventoried, and placed in the hands
of the Duke. Thus, if amid the most secret communications of Egmont and
Horn or their correspondents, a single treasonable thought should be
lurking, it was to go hard but it might be twisted into a cord strong
enough to strangle them all.
The Duke wrote a triumphant letter to his Majesty that very night. He
apologized that these important captures had been deferred so long but,
stated that he had thought it desirable to secure all these leading
personages at a single stroke. He then narrated the masterly manner in
which the operations had been conducted. Certainly, when it is
remembered that the Duke had only reached Brussels upon the 23d August,
and that the two Counts were securely lodged in prison on the 9th of
September, it seemed a superfluous modesty upon his part thus to excuse
himself for an apparent delay. At any rate, in the eyes of the world and
of posterity, his zeal to carry out the bloody commands of his master was
sufficiently swift.
The consternation was universal throughout the provinces when the arrests
became known. Egmont's great popularity and distinguished services
placed him so high above the mass of citizens, and his attachment to the
Catholic religion was moreover so well known, as to make it obvious that
no man could now be safe, when men like him were in the power of Alva and
his myrmidons. The animosity to the Spaniards increased hourly. The
Duchess affected indignation at the arrest of the two nobles, although
it nowhere appears that she attempted a word in their defence, or lifted,
at any subsequent moment, a finger to save them. She was not anxious to
wash her hands of the blood of two innocent men; she was only offended
that they had been arrested without her permission. The Duke had, it is
true, sent Berlaymont and Mansfeld to give her information of the fact,
as soon as the capture had been made, with the plausible excuse that
he preferred to save her from all the responsibility and all the
unpopularity of the measure, Nothing, however, could appease her wrath at
this and every other indication of the contempt in which he appeared to
hold the sister of his sovereign. She complained of his conduct daily to
every one who was admitted to her presence. Herself oppressed by a sense
of personal indignity, she seemed for a moment to identify herself with
the cause of the oppressed provinces. She seemed to imagine herself the
champion of their liberties, and the Netherlanders, for a moments seemed
to participate in the delusion. Because she was indignant at the
insolence of the Duke of Alva to her self, the honest citizens began to
give her credit for a sympathy with their own wrongs. She expressed
herself determined to move about from one city to another, until the
answer to her demand for dismissal should arrive. She allowed her
immediate attendants to abuse the Spaniards in good set terms upon every
occasion. Even her private chaplain permitted himself, in preaching
before her in the palace chapel, to denounce the whole nation as a race
of traitors and ravishers, and for this offence was only reprimanded,
much against her will, by the Duchess, and ordered to retire for a season
to his convent. She did not attempt to disguise her dissatisfaction at
every step which had been taken by the Duke. In all this there was much
petulance, but very little dignity, while there was neither a spark of
real sympathy for the oppressed millions, nor a throb of genuine womanly
emotion for the impending fate of the two nobles. Her principal grief
was that she had pacified the provinces, and that another had now arrived
to reap the glory; but it was difficult, while the unburied bones of many
heretics were still hanging, by her decree, on the rafters of their own
dismantled churches, for her successfully to enact the part of a
benignant and merciful Regent. But it is very true that the horrors of
the Duke's administration have been propitious to the fame of Margaret,
and perhaps more so to that of Cardinal Granvelle. The faint and
struggling rays of humanity which occasionally illumined the course of
their government, were destined to be extinguished in a chaos so profound
and dark, that these last beams of light seemed clearer and more
bountiful by the contrast.
The Count of Hoogstraaten, who was on his way to Brussels, had, by good
fortune, injured his hand through the accidental discharge of a pistol.
Detained by this casualty at Cologne, he was informed, before his arrival
at the capital, of the arrest of his two distinguished friends, and
accepted the hint to betake himself at once to a place of Safety.
The loyalty of the elder Mansfeld was beyond dispute even by Alva. His
son Charles had, however, been imprudent, and, as we have seen, had even
affixed his name to the earliest copies of the Compromise. He had
retired, it is true, from all connexion with the confederates, but his
father knew well that the young Count's signature upon that famous
document would prove his death-warrant, were he found in the country.
He therefore had sent him into Germany before the arrival of the Duke.
The King's satisfaction was unbounded when he learned this important
achievement of Alva, and he wrote immediately to express his approbation
in the most extravagant terms. Cardinal Granvelle, on the contrary,
affected astonishment at a course which he had secretly counselled.
He assured his Majesty that he had never believed Egmont to entertain
sentiments opposed to the Catholic religion, nor to the interests of
the Crown, up to the period of his own departure from the Netherlands.
He was persuaded, he said, that the Count had been abused by others,
although, to be sure, the Cardinal had learned with regret what Egmont
had written on the occasion of the baptism of Count Hoogstraaten's child.
As to the other persons arrested, he said that no one regretted their
fate. The Cardinal added, that he was supposed to be himself the
instigator of these captures, but that he was not disturbed by that, or
by other imputations of a similar nature.
In conversation with those about him, he frequently expressed regret that
the Prince of Orange had been too crafty to be caught in the same net in
which his more simple companions were so inextricably entangled. Indeed,
on the first arrival of the news, that men of high rank had been arrested
in Brussels, the Cardinal eagerly inquired if the Taciturn had been
taken, for by that term he always characterized the Prince. Receiving
a negative reply, he expressed extreme disappointment, adding, that if
Orange had escaped, they had taken nobody; and that his capture would
have been more valuable than that of every man in the Netherlands.
Peter Titelmann, too, the famous inquisitor, who, retired from active
life, was then living upon Philip's bounty, and encouraged by friendly
letters from that monarch, expressed the same opinion. Having been
informed that Egmont and Horn had been captured, he eagerly inquired if
"wise William" had also been taken. He was, of course, answered in the
negative. "Then will our joy be but brief," he observed. "Woe unto us
for the wrath to come from Germany."
On the 12th of July, of this year, Philip wrote to Granvelle to inquire
the particulars of a letter which the Prince of Orange, according to a
previous communication of the Cardinal, had written to Egmont on the
occasion of the baptism of Count Hoogstraaten's child. On the 17th of
August, the Cardinal replied, by setting the King right as to the error
which he had committed. The letter, as he had already stated, was not
written by Orange, but by Egmont, and he expressed his astonishment that
Madame de Parma had not yet sent it to his Majesty. The Duchess must
have seen it, because her confessor had shown it to the person who was
Granvelle's informant. In this letter, the Cardinal continued, the
statement had been made by Egmont to the Prince of Orange that their
plots were discovered, that the King was making armaments, that they were
unable to resist him, and that therefore it had become necessary to
dissemble and to accommodate themselves as well as possible to the
present situation, while waiting for other circumstances under which to
accomplish their designs. Granvelle advised, moreover, that Straalen,
who had been privy to the letter, and perhaps the amanuensis, should be
forthwith arrested.
The Cardinal was determined not to let the matter sleep, notwithstanding
his protestation of a kindly feeling towards the imprisoned Count.
Against the statement that he knew of a letter which amounted to a full
confession of treason, out of Egmont's own mouth--a fact which, if
proved, and perhaps, if even insinuated, would be sufficient with Philip
to deprive Egmont of twenty thousand lives--against these constant
recommendations to his suspicious and sanguinary master, to ferret out
this document, if it were possible, it must be confessed that the
churchman's vague and hypocritical expressions on the side of mercy were
very little worth.
Certainly these seeds of suspicion did not fall upon a barren soil.
Philip immediately communicated the information thus received to the Duke
of Alva, charging him on repeated occasions to find out what was written,
either by Egmont or by Straalen, at Egmont's instigation, stating that
such a letter was written at the time of the Hoogstraaten baptism, that
it would probably illustrate the opinions of Egmont at that period, and
that the letter itself, which the confessor of Madame de Parma had once
had in his hands, ought, if possible, to be procured. Thus the very
language used by Granvelle to Philip was immediately repeated by the
monarch to his representative in the Netherlands, at the moment when all
Egmont's papers were in his possession, and when Egmont's private
secretary was undergoing the torture, in order that; secrets might be
wrenched from him which had never entered his brain. The fact that no
such letter was found, that the Duchess had never alluded to any such
document, and that neither a careful scrutiny of papers, nor the
application of the rack, could elicit any satisfactory information on the
subject, leads to the conclusion that no such treasonable paper had ever
existed, save in the imagination of the Cardinal. At any rate, it is no
more than just to hesitate before affixing a damning character to a
document, in the absence of any direct proof that there ever was such a
document at all. The confessor of Madame de Parma told another person,
who told the Cardinal, that either Count Egmont, or Burgomaster Straalen,
by command of Count Egmont, wrote to the Prince of Orange thus and so.
What evidence was this upon which to found a charge of high treason
against a man whom Granvelle affected to characterize as otherwise
neither opposed to the Catholic religion, nor to the true service of the
King? What vulpine kind of mercy was it on the part of the Cardinal,
while making such deadly insinuations, to recommend the imprisoned victim
to clemency?
The unfortunate envoys, Marquis Bergen and Baron Montigny, had remained
in Spain under close observation. Of those doomed victims who, in spite
of friendly remonstrances and of ominous warnings, had thus ventured into
the lion's den, no retreating footmarks were ever to be seen. Their
fate, now that Alva had at last been despatched to the Netherlands,
seemed to be sealed, and the Marquis Bergen, accepting the augury in its
most evil sense, immediately afterwards had sickened unto death. Whether
it were the sickness of hope deferred, suddenly changing to despair, or
whether it were a still more potent and unequivocal poison which came to
the relief of the unfortunate nobleman, will perhaps never be ascertained
with certainty. The secrets of those terrible prison-houses of Spain,
where even the eldest begotten son, and the wedded wife of the monarch,
were soon afterwards believed to have been the victims of his dark
revenge, can never perhaps be accurately known, until the grave gives
up its dead, and the buried crimes of centuries are revealed.
It was very soon after the departure of Alva's fleet from Carthagena,
that the Marquis Bergen felt his end approaching. He sent for the Prince
of Eboli, with whom he had always maintained intimate relations, and whom
he believed to be his disinterested friend. Relying upon his faithful
breast, and trusting to receive from his eyes alone the pious drops of
sympathy which he required, the dying noble poured out his long and last
complaint. He charged him to tell the man whom he would no longer call
his king, that he had ever been true and loyal, that the bitterness of
having been constantly suspected, when he was conscious of entire
fidelity, was a sharper sorrow than could be lightly believed, and that
he hoped the time would come when his own truth and the artifices of his
enemies would be brought to light. He closed his parting message by
predicting that after he had been long laid in the grave, the
impeachments against his character would be, at last, although too late,
retracted.
So spake the unhappy envoy, and his friend replied with words of
consolation. It is probable that he even ventured, in the King's name,
to grant him the liberty of returning to his home; the only remedy, as
his physicians had repeatedly stated, which could possibly be applied to
his disease. But the devilish hypocrisy of Philip, and the abject
perfidy of Eboli, at this juncture, almost surpass belief. The Prince
came to press the hand and to close the eyes of the dying man whom he
called his friend, having first carefully studied a billet of most minute
and secret instructions from his master as to the deportment he was to
observe upon this solemn occasion and afterwards. This paper, written in
Philip's own hand, had been delivered to Eboli on the very day of his
visit to Bergen, and bore the superscription that it was not to be read
nor opened till the messenger who brought it had left his presence. It
directed the Prince, if it should be evident Marquis was past recovery,
to promise him, in the King's name, the permission of returning to the
Netherlands. Should, however, a possibility of his surviving appear,
Eboli was only to hold out a hope that such permission might eventually
be obtained. In case of the death of Bergen, the Prince was immediately
to confer with the Grand Inquisitor and with the Count of Feria, upon the
measures to be taken for his obsequies. It might seem advisable, in that
event to exhibit the regret which the King and his ministers felt for his
death, and the great esteem in which they held the nobles of the
Netherlands. At the same time, Eboli was further instructed to confer
with the same personages as to the most efficient means for preventing
the escape of Baron Montigny; to keep a vigilant eye upon his movements,
and to give general directions to governors and to postmasters to
intercept his flight, should it be attempted. Finally, in case of
Bergen's death, the Prince was directed to despatch a special messenger,
apparently on his own responsibility, and as if in the absence and
without the knowledge of the King, to inform the Duchess of Parma of the
event, and to urge her immediately to take possession of the city of
Bergen-op-Zoom, and of all other property belonging to the Marquis, until
it should be ascertained whether it were not possible to convict him,
after death, of treason, and to confiscate his estates accordingly.
Such were the instructions of Philip to Eboli, and precisely in
accordance with the program, was the horrible comedy enacted at the
death-bed of the envoy. Three days after his parting interview with his
disinterested friend, the Marquis was a corpse.--Before his limbs were
cold, a messenger was on his way to Brussels, instructing the Regent to
sequestrate his property, and to arrest, upon suspicion of heresy, the
youthful kinsman and niece, who, by the will of the Marquis, were to be
united in marriage and to share his estate. The whole drama, beginning
with the death scene, was enacted according to order: Before the arrival
of Alva in the Netherlands, the property of the Marquis was in the hands
of the Government, awaiting the confiscation,--which was but for a brief
season delayed, while on the other hand, Baron Montigny, Bergen's
companion in doom, who was not, however, so easily to be carried off
by homesickness, was closely confined in the alcazar of Segovia, never
to leave a Spanish prison alive. There is something pathetic in the
delusion in which Montigny and his brother, the Count Horn, both
indulged, each believing that the other was out of harm's way, the one
by his absence from the Netherlands, the other by his absence from Spain,
while both, involved in the same meshes, were rapidly and surely
approaching their fate.
In the same despatch of the 9th September, in which the Duke communicated
to Philip the capture of Egmont and Horn, he announced to him his
determination to establish a new court for the trial of crimes committed
during the recent period of troubles. This wonderful tribunal was
accordingly created with the least possible delay. It was called the
Council of Troubles, but it soon acquired the terrible name, by which it
will be forever known in history, of the 'Blood-Council'. It superseded
all other institutions. Every court, from those of the municipal
magistracies up to the supreme councils of the provinces, were forbidden
to take cognizance in future of any cause growing out of the late
troubles. The council of state, although it was not formally disbanded,
fell into complete desuetude, its members being occasionally summoned
into Alva's private chambers in an irregular manner, while its principal
functions were usurped by the Blood-Council. Not only citizens of every
province, but the municipal bodies and even the sovereign provincial
estates themselves, were compelled to plead, like humble individuals,
before this new and extraordinary tribunal. It is unnecessary to allude
to the absolute violation which was thus committed of all charters, laws
and privileges, because the very creation of the council was a bold and
brutal proclamation that those laws and privileges were at an end. The
constitution or maternal principle of this suddenly erected court was of
a twofold nature. It defined and it punished the crime of treason.
The definitions, couched in eighteen articles, declared it to be treason
to have delivered or signed any petition against the new bishops, the
Inquisition, or the Edicts; to have tolerated public preaching under any
circumstances; to have omitted resistance to the image-breaking, to the
field-preaching, or to the presentation of the Request by the nobles, and
"either through sympathy or surprise" to have asserted that the King did
not possess the right to deprive all the provinces of their liberties, or
to have maintained that this present tribunal was bound to respect in any
manner any laws or any charters. In these brief and simple, but
comprehensive terms, was the crime of high treason defined. The
punishment was still more briefly, simply, and comprehensively stated,
for it was instant death in all cases. So well too did this new and
terrible engine perform its work, that in less than three months from the
time of its erection, eighteen hundred human beings had suffered death by
its summary proceedings; some of the highest, the noblest, and the most
virtuous in the land among the number; nor had it then manifested the
slightest indication of faltering in its dread career.
Yet, strange to say, this tremendous court, thus established upon the
ruins of all the ancient institutions of the country, had not been
provided with even a nominal authority from any source whatever. The
King had granted it no letters patent or charter, nor had even the Duke
of Alva thought it worth while to grant any commissions either in his own
name or as Captain-General, to any of the members composing the board.
The Blood-Council was merely an informal club, of which the Duke was
perpetual president, while the other members were all appointed by
himself.
Of these subordinate councillors, two had the right of voting, subject,
however, in all cases to his final decision, while the rest of the number
did not vote at all. It had not, therefore, in any sense, the character
of a judicial, legislative, or executive tribunal, but was purely a board
of advice by which the bloody labors of the duke were occasionally
lightened as to detail, while not a feather's weight of power or of
responsibility was removed from his shoulders. He reserved for himself
the final decision upon all causes which should come before the council,
and stated his motives for so doing with grim simplicity. "Two reasons,"
he wrote to the King, "have determined me thus to limit the power of the
tribunal; the first that, not knowing its members, I might be easily
deceived by them; the second, that the men of law only condemn for crimes
which are proved; whereas your Majesty knows that affairs of state are
governed by very different rules from the laws which they have here."
It being, therefore, the object of the Duke to compose a body of men who
would be of assistance to him in condemning for crimes which could not be
proved, and in slipping over statutes which were not to be recognized, it
must be confessed that he was not unfortunate in the appointments which
he made to the office of councillors. In this task of appointment he had
the assistance of the experienced Viglius. That learned jurisconsult,
with characteristic lubricity, had evaded the dangerous honor for
himself, but he nominated a number of persons from whom the Duke
selected his list. The sacerdotal robes which he had so recently and
so "craftily" assumed, furnished his own excuse, and in his letters to
his faithful Hopper he repeatedly congratulated himself upon his success
in keeping himself at a distance from so bloody and perilous a post.
It is impossible to look at the conduct of the distinguished Frisian at
this important juncture without contempt. Bent only upon saving himself,
his property, and his reputation, he did not hesitate to bend before the
"most illustrious Duke," as he always denominated him, with fulsome and
fawning homage. While he declined to dip his own fingers in the innocent
blood which was about to flow in torrents, he did not object to officiate
at the initiatory preliminaries of the great Netherland holocaust. His
decent and dainty demeanor seems even more offensive than the jocularity
of the real murderers. Conscious that no man knew the laws and customs
of the Netherlands better than himself, he had the humble effrontery to
observe that it was necessary for him at that moment silently to submit
his own unskilfulness to the superior judgment and knowledge of others.
Having at last been relieved from the stone of Sisyphus, which, as he
plaintively expressed himself, he had been rolling for twenty years;
having, by the arrival of Tisnacq, obtained his discharge as President
of the state council, he was yet not unwilling to retain the emoluments
and the rank of President of the privy council, although both offices had
become sinecures since the erection of the Council of Blood. Although
his life had been spent in administrative and judicial employments,
he did not blush upon a matter of constitutional law to defer to the
authority of such jurisconsults as the Duke of Alva and his two Spanish
bloodhounds, Vargas and Del Rio. He did not like, he observed, in his
confidential correspondence, to gainsay the Duke, when maintaining, that
in cases of treason, the privileges of Brabant were powerless, although
he mildly doubted whether the Brabantines would agree with the doctrine.
He often thought, he said, of remedies for restoring the prosperity of
the provinces, but in action he only assisted the Duke, to the best of
his abilities, in arranging the Blood-Council. He wished well to his
country, but he was more anxious for the favor of Alva. "I rejoice,"
said he, in one of his letters, "that the most illustrious Duke has
written to the King in praise of my obsequiousness; when I am censured
here for so reverently cherishing him, it is a consolation that my
services to the King and to the governor are not unappreciated there."
Indeed the Duke of Alva, who had originally suspected the President's
character, seemed at last overcome by his indefatigable and cringing
homage. He wrote to the King, in whose good graces the learned Doctor
was most anxious at that portentous period to maintain himself, that the
President was very serviceable and diligent, and that he deserved to
receive a crumb of comfort from the royal hand. Philip, in consequence,
wrote in one of his letters a few lines of vague compliment, which could
be shown to Viglius, according to Alva's suggestion. It is, however, not
a little characteristic of the Spanish court and of the Spanish monarch,
that, on the very day before, he had sent to the Captain-General a few
documents of very different import. In order, as he said, that the Duke
might be ignorant of nothing which related to the Netherlands, he
forwarded to him copies of the letters written by Margaret of Parma from
Brussels, three years before. These letters, as it will be recollected,
contained an account of the secret investigations which the Duchess had
made as to the private character and opinions of Viglius--at the very
moment when he apparently stood highest in her confidence--and charged
him with heresy, swindling, and theft. Thus the painstaking and time-
serving President, with all his learning and experience, was successively
the dupe of Margaret and of Alva, whom he so obsequiously courted, and
always of Philip, whom he so feared and worshipped.
With his assistance, the list of blood-councillors was quickly completed.
No one who was offered the office refused it. Noircarmes and Berlaymont
accepted with very great eagerness. Several presidents and councillors
of the different provincial tribunals were appointed, but all the
Netherlanders were men of straw. Two Spaniards, Del Rio and Vargas,
were the only members who could vote; while their decisions, as already
stated, were subject to reversal by Alva. Del Rio was a man without
character or talent, a mere tool in the hands of his superiors, but Juan
de Vargas was a terrible reality.
No better man could have been found in Europe for the post to which he
was thus elevated. To shed human blood was, in his opinion, the only
important business and the only exhilarating pastime of life. His youth
had been stained with other crimes. He had been obliged to retire from
Spain, because of his violation of an orphan child to whom he was
guardian, but, in his manhood, he found no pleasure but in murder. He
executed Alva's bloody work with an industry which was almost superhuman,
and with a merriment which would have shamed a demon. His execrable
jests ring through the blood and smoke and death-cries of those days of
perpetual sacrifice. He was proud to be the double of the iron-hearted
Duke, and acted so uniformly in accordance with his views, that the right
of revision remained but nominal. There could be no possibility of
collision where the subaltern was only anxious to surpass an incomparable
superior. The figure of Vargas rises upon us through the mist of three
centuries with terrible distinctness. Even his barbarous grammar has not
been forgotten, and his crimes against syntax and against humanity have
acquired the same immortality. "Heretici fraxerunt templa, boni nihili
faxerunt contra, ergo debent omnes patibulare," was the comprehensive but
barbarous formula of a man who murdered the Latin language as ruthlessly
as he slaughtered his contemporaries.
Among the ciphers who composed the rest of the board, the Flemish
Councillor Hessels was the one whom the Duke most respected. He was not
without talent or learning, but the Duke only valued him for his cruelty.
Being allowed to take but little share in the deliberations, Hessels was
accustomed to doze away his afternoon hours at the council table, and
when awakened from his nap in order that he might express an opinion on
the case then before the court, was wont to rub his eyes and to call out
"Ad patibulum, ad patibulum," ("to the gallows with him, to the gallows
with him,") with great fervor, but in entire ignorance of the culprit's
name or the merits of the case. His wife, naturally disturbed that her
husband's waking and sleeping hours were alike absorbed with this
hangman's work, more than once ominously expressed her hope to him, that
he, whose head and heart were thus engrossed with the gibbet, might not
one day come to hang upon it himself; a gloomy prophecy which the Future
most terribly fulfilled.
The Council of Blood, thus constituted, held its first session on the
20th September, at the lodgings of Alva. Springing completely grown and
armed to the teeth from the head of its inventor, the new tribunal--at
the very outset in possession of all its vigor--forthwith began to
manifest a terrible activity in accomplishing the objects of its
existence. The councillors having been sworn to "eternal secrecy as to
any thing which should be transacted at the board, and having likewise
made oath to denounce any one of their number who should violate the
pledge," the court was considered as organized. Alva worked therein
seven hours daily. It may be believed that the subordinates were not
spared, and that their office proved no sinecure. Their labors, however,
were not encumbered by antiquated forms. As this supreme and only
tribunal for all the Netherlands had no commission or authority save the
will of the Captain-General, so it was also thought a matter of
supererogation to establish a set of rules and orders such as might be
useful in less independent courts. The forms of proceeding were brief
and artless. There was a rude organization by which a crowd of
commissioners, acting as inferior officers of the council, were spread
over the provinces, whose business was to collect information concerning
all persons who might be incriminated for participation in the recent
troubles. The greatest crime, however, was to be rich, and one which
could be expiated by no virtues, however signal. Alva was bent upon
proving himself as accomplished a financier as he was indisputably a
consummate commander, and he had promised his master an annual income of
500,000 ducats from the confiscations which were to accompany the
executions.
It was necessary that the blood torrent should flow at once through the
Netherlands, in order that the promised golden river, a yard deep,
according to his vaunt, should begin to irrigate the thirsty soil of
Spain. It is obvious, from the fundamental laws which were made to
define treason at the same moment in which they established the council,
that any man might be at any instant summoned to the court. Every man,
whether innocent or guilty, whether Papist or Protestant, felt his head
shaking on his shoulders. If he were wealthy, there seemed no remedy but
flight, which was now almost impossible, from the heavy penalties affixed
by the new edict upon all carriers, shipmasters, and wagoners, who should
aid in the escape of heretics.
A certain number of these commissioners were particularly instructed to
collect information as to the treason of Orange, Louis Nassau, Brederode,
Egmont, Horn, Culemberg, Vanden Berg, Bergen, and Montigny. Upon such
information the proceedings against those distinguished seigniors were to
be summarily instituted. Particular councillors of the Court of Blood
were charged with the arrangement of these important suits, but the
commissioners were to report in the first instance to the Duke himself,
who afterwards returned the paper into the hands of his subordinates.
With regard to the inferior and miscellaneous cases which were daily
brought in incredible profusion before the tribunal, the same
preliminaries were observed, by way of aping the proceedings in courts of
justice. Alva sent the cart-loads of information which were daily
brought to him, but which neither he nor any other man had time to read,
to be disposed of by the board of councillors. It was the duty of the
different subalterns, who, as already stated, had no right of voting,
to prepare reports upon the cases. Nothing could be more summary.
Information was lodged against a man, or against a hundred men, in one
document. The Duke sent the papers to the council, and the inferior
councillors reported at once to Vargas. If the report concluded with a
recommendation of death to the man, or the hundred men in question,
Vargas instantly approved it, and execution was done upon the man, or the
hundred men, within forty-eight hours. If the report had any other
conclusion, it was immediately sent back for revision, and the reporters
were overwhelmed with reproaches by the President.
Such being the method of operation, it may be supposed that the
councillors were not allowed to slacken in their terrible industry. The
register of every city, village, and hamlet throughout the Netherlands
showed the daily lists of men, women, and children thus sacrificed at the
shrine of the demon who had obtained the mastery over this unhappy land.
It was not often that an individual was of sufficient importance to be
tried--if trial it could be called--by himself. It was found more
expeditious to send them in batches to the furnace. Thus, for example,
on the 4th of January, eighty-four inhabitants of Valenciennes were
condemned; on another day, ninety-five miscellaneous individuals, from
different places in Flanders; on another, forty-six inhabitants of
Malines; on another, thirty-five persons from different localities, and
so on.
The evening of Shrovetide, a favorite holiday in the Netherlands,
afforded an occasion for arresting and carrying off a vast number of
doomed individuals at a single swoop. It was correctly supposed that the
burghers, filled with wine and wassail, to which perhaps the persecution
under which they lived lent an additional and horrible stimulus, might be
easily taken from their beds in great numbers, and be delivered over at
once to the council. The plot was ingenious, the net was spread
accordingly. Many of the doomed were, however, luckily warned of the
terrible termination which was impending over their festival, and
bestowed themselves in safety for a season. A prize of about five
hundred prisoners was all which rewarded the sagacity of the enterprise.
It is needless to add that they were all immediately executed. It is a
wearisome and odious task to ransack the mouldy records of three
centuries ago, in order to reproduce the obscure names of the thousands
who were thus sacrificed.. The dead have buried their dead, and are
forgotten. It is likewise hardly necessary to state that the proceedings
before the council were all 'ex parte', and that an information was
almost inevitably followed by a death-warrant. It sometimes happened
even that the zeal of the councillors outstripped the industry of the
commissioners. The sentences were occasionally in advance of the docket.
Thus upon one occasion a man's case was called for trial, but before the
investigation was commenced it was discovered that he had been already
executed. A cursory examination of the papers proved, moreover, as
usual, that the culprit had committed no crime. "No matter for that,"
said Vargas, jocosely, "if he has died innocent, it will be all the
better for him when he takes his trial in the other world."
But, however the councillors might indulge in these gentle jests among
themselves, it was obvious that innocence was in reality impossible,
according to the rules which had been laid down regarding treason.
The practice was in accordance with the precept, and persons were daily
executed with senseless pretexts, which was worse than executions with no
pretexts at all. Thus Peter de Witt of Amsterdam was beheaded, because
at one of the tumults in that city he had persuaded a rioter not to fire
upon a magistrate. This was taken as sufficient proof that he was a man
in authority among the rebels, and he was accordingly put to death.
Madame Juriaen, who, in 1566, had struck with her slipper a little wooden
image of the Virgin, together with her maid-servant, who had witnessed
without denouncing the crime, were both drowned by the hangman in a
hogshead placed on the scaffold.
Death, even, did not in all cases place a criminal beyond the reach of
the executioner. Egbert Meynartzoon, a man of high official rank, had
been condemned, together with two colleagues, on an accusation of
collecting money in a Lutheran church. He died in prison of dropsy. The
sheriff was indignant with the physician, because, in spite of cordials
and strengthening prescriptions, the culprit had slipped through his
fingers before he had felt those of the hangman. He consoled himself by
placing the body on a chair, and having the dead man beheaded in company
with his colleagues.
Thus the whole country became a charnel-house; the deathbell tolled
hourly in every village; not a family but was called to mourn for its
dearest relatives, while the survivors stalked listlessly about, the
ghosts of their former selves, among the wrecks of their former homes.
The spirit of the nation, within a few months after the arrival of Alva,
seemed hopelessly broken. The blood of its best and bravest had already
stained the scaffold; the men to whom it bad been accustomed to look for
guidance and protection, were dead, in prison, or in exile. Submission
had ceased to be of any avail, flight was impossible, and the spirit of
vengeance had alighted at every fireside. The mourners went daily about
the streets, for there was hardly a house which had not been made
desolate. The scaffolds, the gallows, the funeral piles, which had been
sufficient in ordinary times, furnished now an entirely inadequate
machinery for the incessant executions. Columns and stakes in every
street, the door-posts of private houses, the fences in the fields were
laden with human carcasses, strangled, burned, beheaded. The orchards in
the country bore on many a tree the hideous fruit of human bodies.
Thus the Netherlands were crushed, and but for the stringency of the
tyranny which had now closed their gates, would have been depopulated.
The grass began to grow in the streets of those cities which had recently
nourished so many artisans. In all those great manufacturing and
industrial marts, where the tide of human life had throbbed so
vigorously, there now reigned the silence and the darkness of midnight.
It was at this time that the learned Viglius wrote to his friend Hopper,
that all venerated the prudence and gentleness of the Duke of Alva.
Such were among the first-fruits of that prudence and that gentleness.
The Duchess of Parma had been kept in a continued state of irritation.
She had not ceased for many months to demand her release from the odious
position of a cipher in a land where she had so lately been sovereign,
and she had at last obtained it. Philip transmitted his acceptance of
her resignation by the same courier who brought Alva's commission to be
governor-general in her place. The letters to the Duchess were full of
conventional compliments for her past services, accompanied, however,
with a less barren and more acceptable acknowledgment, in the shape of a
life income of 14,000 ducats instead of the 8000 hitherto enjoyed by her
Highness.
In addition to this liberal allowance, of which she was never to be
deprived, except upon receiving full payment of 140,000 ducats, she was
presented with 25,000 florins by the estates of Brabant, and with 30,000
by those of Flanders.
With these substantial tokens of the success of her nine years' fatigue
and intolerable anxiety, she at last took her departure from the
Netherlands, having communicated the dissolution of her connexion with
the provinces by a farewell letter to the Estates dated 9th December,
1567. Within a few weeks afterwards, escorted by the Duke of Alva across
the frontier of Brabant; attended by a considerable deputation of Flemish
nobility into Germany, and accompanied to her journey's end at Parma by
the Count and Countess of Mansfeld, she finally closed her eventful
career in the Netherlands.
The horrors of the succeeding administration proved beneficial to her
reputation. Upon the dark ground of succeeding years the lines which
recorded her history seemed written with letters of light. Yet her
conduct in the Netherlands offers but few points for approbation, and
many for indignant censure. That she was not entirely destitute of
feminine softness and sentiments of bounty, her parting despatch to her
brother proved. In that letter she recommended to him a course of
clemency and forgiveness, and reminded him that the nearer kings approach
to God in station, the more they should endeavor to imitate him in his
attributes of benignity. But the language of this farewell was more
tender than had been the spirit of her government. One looks in vain,
too, through the general atmosphere of kindness which pervades the
epistle; for a special recommendation of those distinguished and doomed
seigniors, whose attachment to her person and whose chivalrous and
conscientious endeavors to fulfil her own orders, had placed them upon
the edge of that precipice from which they were shortly to be hurled.
The men who had restrained her from covering herself with disgrace by a
precipitate retreat from the post of danger, and who had imperilled their
lives by obedience to her express instructions, had been long languishing
in solitary confinement, never to be terminated except by a traitor's
death--yet we search in vain for a kind word in their behalf.
Meantime the second civil war in France had broken out. The hollow truce
by which the Guise party and the Huguenots had partly pretended to
deceive each other was hastened to its end; among other causes, by the
march of Alva, to the Netherlands. The Huguenots had taken alarm, for
they recognized the fellowship which united their foes in all countries
against the Reformation, and Conde and Coligny knew too well that the
same influence which had brought Alva to Brussels would soon create an
exterminating army against their followers. Hostilities were resumed
with more bitterness than ever. The battle of St. Denis--fierce, fatal,
but indecisive--was fought. The octogenarian hero, Montmorency, fighting
like a foot soldier, refusing to yield his sword, and replying to the
respectful solicitations of his nearest enemy by dashing his teeth down
his throat with the butt-end of his pistol, the hero of so many battles,
whose defeat at St. Quintin had been the fatal point in his career, had
died at last in his armor, bravely but not gloriously, in conflict with
his own countrymen, led by his own heroic nephew. The military control
of the Catholic party was completely in the hand of the Guises; the
Chancellor de l'Hopital had abandoned the court after a last and futile
effort to reconcile contending factions, which no human power could
unite; the Huguenots had possessed themselves of Rochelle and of other
strong places, and, under the guidance of adroit statesmen and
accomplished generals, were pressing the Most Christian monarch hard in
the very heart of his kingdom.
As early as the middle of October, while still in Antwerp, Alva had
received several secret agents of the French monarch, then closely
beleaguered in his capital. Cardinal Lorraine offered to place several
strong places of France in the hands of the Spaniard, and Alva had
written to Philip that he was disposed to accept the offer, and to render
the service. The places thus held would be a guarantee for his expenses,
he said, while in case King Charles and his brother should die, "their
possession would enable Philip to assert his own claim to the French
crown in right of his wife, the Salic law being merely a pleasantry."
The Queen Dowager, adopting now a very different tone from that which
characterized her conversation at the Bayonne interview, wrote to Alva,
that, if for want of 2000 Spanish musketeers, which she requested him to
furnish, she should be obliged to succumb, she chose to disculpate
herself in advance before God and Christian princes for the peace which
she should be obliged to make. The Duke wrote to her in reply, that it
was much better to have a kingdom ruined in preserving it for God and the
king by war, than to have it kept entire without war, to the profit of
the devil and of his followers. He was also reported on another occasion
to have reminded her of the Spanish proverb--that the head of one salmon
is worth those of a hundred frogs. The hint, if it were really given,
was certainly destined to be acted upon.
The Duke not only furnished Catherine with advice, but with the
musketeers which she had solicited. Two thousand foot and fifteen
hundred horse, under the Count of Aremberg, attended by a choice band of
the Catholic nobility of the Netherlands, had joined the royal camp at
Paris before the end of the year, to take their part in the brief
hostilities by which the second treacherous peace was to be preceded.
Meantime, Alva was not unmindful of the business which had served as a
pretext in the arrest of the two Counts. The fortifications of the
principal cities were pushed on with great rapidity. The memorable
citadel of Antwerp in particular had already been commenced in October
under the superintendence of the celebrated engineers, Pacheco and
Gabriel de Cerbelloni. In a few months it was completed, at a cost of
one million four hundred thousand florins, of which sum the citizens, in
spite of their remonstrances, were compelled to contribute more than one
quarter. The sum of four hundred thousand florins was forced from the
burghers by a tax upon all hereditary property within the municipality.
Two thousand workmen were employed daily in the construction of this
important fortress, which was erected, as its position most plainly
manifested, not to protect, but to control the commercial capital of the
provinces. It stood at the edge of the city, only separated from its
walls by an open esplanade. It was the most perfect pentagon in Europe,
having one of its sides resting on the Scheld, two turned towards the
city, and two towards the open country. Five bastions, with walls of
hammered stone, connected by curtains of turf and masonry, surrounded by
walls measuring a league in circumference, and by an outer moat fed by
the Scheld, enclosed a spacious enceinte, where a little church with many
small lodging-houses, shaded by trees and shrubbery, nestled among the
bristling artillery, as if to mimic the appearance of a peaceful and
pastoral village. To four of the five bastions, the Captain-General,
with characteristic ostentation, gave his own names and titles. One was
called the Duke, the second Ferdinando, a third Toledo, a fourth Alva,
while the fifth was baptized with the name of the ill-fated engineer,
Pacheco. The Watergate was decorated with the escutcheon of Alva,
surrounded by his Golden Fleece collar, with its pendant lamb of God; a
symbol of blasphemous irony, which still remains upon the fortress, to
recal the image of the tyrant and murderer. Each bastion was honeycombed
with casemates and subterranean storehouses, and capable of containing
within its bowels a vast supply of provisions, munitions, and soldiers.
Such was the celebrated citadel built to tame the turbulent spirit of
Antwerp, at the cost of those whom it was to terrify and to insult.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Conde and Coligny
Furnished, in addition, with a force of two thousand prostitutes
He came as a conqueror not as a mediator
Hope deferred, suddenly changing to despair
Meantime the second civil war in France had broken out
Spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood
The greatest crime, however, was to be rich
Time and myself are two
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