Orange did not take this extreme step without adequate cause. At the very time that he left the Netherlands Philip was taking leave of the Duke of Alva, whom he was despatching at the head of a veteran force to carry out without pity or remorse the stern duty of expelling heresy from the provinces and punishing all those, and especially the leaders, who had ventured to oppose the arbitrary exercise of the royal authority. He had for some time been preparing this expedition. He still kept up the pretence that he was coming in person to enquire into the alleged grievances, but he never had the slightest intention of quitting Madrid. Alva sailed from Cartagena (April 27) for Genoa, and proceeded at once to draw together from the various Spanish garrisons in Italy a picked body of some 12,000 men. With these he set out in June for his long march across the Alps and through Burgundy, Lorraine and Luxemburg. His[pg.43] progress, jealously watched by the French and Swiss, met with no opposition save for the difficulties of the route. He entered the Netherlands on August 8, with his army intact. A number of notables, amongst whom was Egmont, came to meet him on his way to Brussels. He received them, more particularly Egmont, with every appearance of graciousness. Alva as yet bore only the title of Captain-General, but the king had bestowed on him full powers civil and military; and the Duchess of Parma, though still nominally regent, found herself reduced to a nonentity. Alva's first step was to place strong Spanish garrisons in the principal cities, his next to get the leaders who had been marked for destruction into his power. To effect this he succeeded by fair and flattering words in securing the presence of both Egmont and Hoorn at Brussels. Under the pretence of taking part in a consultation they were (September 9) invited to the duke's residence and on their arrival suddenly found themselves arrested. At the same time their secretaries and papers were seized, and Antony van Stralen, the burgomaster of Antwerp, was placed under arrest. These high-handed actions were the prelude to a reign of terror; and Margaret, already humiliated by finding herself superseded, requested her brother to accept her resignation. On October 6 the office of Governor-General was conferred upon Alva; and shortly afterwards the duchess left the Netherlands and returned to Parma.
Alva had now the reins of power in his hand, and with a relentless zeal and cold-blooded ferocity, which have made his name a by-word, he set about the accomplishment of the fell task with which his master had entrusted him. He had to enforce with drastic rigour all the penalties decreed by the placards against heretics and preachers, and to deal summarily with all who had taken any part in opposition to the government. But to attempt to do this by means of the ordinary courts and magistrates would consume time and lead to many acquittals. Alva therefore had no sooner thrown off the mask by the sudden and skilfully planned arrest of Egmont and Hoorn, than he proceeded to erect an extraordinary tribunal, which had no legal standing except such as the arbitrary will of the duke conferred upon it. This so-called Council of Troubles, which speedily acquired in popular usage the name of the Council of Blood, virtually consisted of Alva himself, who was president and to whose final decision all cases were referred, and two Spanish lawyers, his[pg.44] chosen tools and agents, Juan de Vargas and Louis del Rio. The two royalist nobles, Noircarmes and Barlaymont, and five Netherland jurists also had seats; but, as only the Spaniards voted, the others before long ceased to attend the meetings. The proceedings indeed were, from the legal point of view, a mere travesty of justice. A whole army of commissioners was let loose upon the land, and informers were encouraged and rewarded. Multitudes of accused were hauled before the tribunal and were condemned by batches almost without the form of a trial. For long hours day by day Vargas and del Rio revelled in their work of butchery; and in all parts of the Netherlands the executioners were busy. It was of no use for the accused to appeal to the charters and privileges of their provinces. All alike were summoned to Brussels; non curamus privilegios vestros declared Vargas in his ungrammatical Latin. Hand in hand with the wholesale sentences of death went the confiscation of property. Vast sums went into the treasury. The whole land for awhile was terror-stricken. All organised opposition was crushed, and no one dared to raise his voice in protest.
The Prince of Orange was summoned to appear in person before the council within six weeks, under pain of perpetual banishment and confiscation of his estates. He refused to come, and energetically denied that the council had any jurisdiction over him. The same sentence was passed upon all the other leaders who had placed themselves out of reach of Alva's arm—Sainte Aldegonde, Hoogstraeten, Culemburg, Montigny, Lewis of Nassau and others. Unable to lay hands upon the prince himself, the governor-general took dastardly advantage of William's indiscretion in leaving his eldest son at Louvain to pursue his studies at the university. At the beginning of 1568 Philip William, Count of Buren in right of his mother, was seized and sent to Madrid to be brought up at the court of Philip to hate the cause to which his father henceforth devoted his life. Already indeed, before the abduction of his son, Orange from his safe retreat at Dillenburg had been exerting himself to raise troops for the invasion of the Netherlands. He still professed loyalty to the king and declared that in the king's name he wished to restore to the provinces those liberties and privileges which Philip himself had sworn that he would maintain. The difficulty was to find the large sum of money required for such an enterprise, and it was only by extraordinary efforts that a sufficient amount was[pg.45] obtained. Part of the money was collected in Antwerp and various towns of Holland and Zeeland, the rest subscribed by individuals. John of Nassau pledged his estates, Orange sold his plate and jewels, and finally a war-chest of 200,000 florins was gathered together. It was proposed to attack the Netherlands from three directions. From the north Lewis of Nassau was to lead an army from the Ems into Friesland; Hoogstraeten on the east to effect an entrance by way of Maestricht; while another force of Huguenots and refugees in the south was to march into Artois. It was an almost desperate scheme in the face of veteran troops in a central position under such a tried commander as Alva. The last-named French force and that under Hoogstraeten were easily defeated and scattered by Spanish detachments sent to meet them. Lewis of Nassau was at first more successful. Entering Groningen at the head of eight or nine thousand undisciplined troops he was attacked, May 23, in a strong position behind a morass by a Spanish force under the Count of Aremberg, Stadholder of Friesland, at Heiligerlee. He gained a complete victory. Aremberg himself was slain, as was also the younger brother of Lewis, Adolphus of Nassau. The triumph of the invaders was of short duration. Alva himself took in hand the task of dealing with the rebels. At the head of 15,000 troops he drove before him the levies of Nassau to Jemmingen on the estuary of the Ems, and here with the loss of only seven men he completely annihilated them. Lewis himself and a few others alone escaped by throwing themselves into the water and swimming for their lives.
The action at Heiligerlee, by compelling the governor-general to take the field, had hastened the fate of Egmont and Hoorn. After their arrest the two noblemen were kept in solitary confinement in the citadel of Ghent for several months, while the long list of charges against them was being examined by the Council of Troubles—in other words by Vargas and del Rio. These charges they angrily denied; and great efforts were made on their behalf by the wife of Egmont and the dowager Countess of Hoorn. Appeals were made to the governor-general and to Philip himself, either for pardon on the ground of services rendered to the State, or at least for a trial, as Knights of the Golden Fleece, before the Court of the Order. The Emperor Maximilian himself pleaded with Philip for clemency, but without avail. Their doom had been settled in advance, and the king was inflexible. Alva accordingly determined[pg.46] that they should be executed before he left Brussels for his campaign in the north. On June 2, the council, after refusing to hear any further evidence in the prisoners' favour, pronounced them guilty of high treason; and Alva at once signed the sentences of death. Egmont and Hoorn the next day were brought by a strong detachment of troops from Ghent to Brussels and were confined in a building opposite the town hall, known as the Broodhuis. On June 5, their heads were struck off upon a scaffold erected in the great square before their place of confinement. Both of them met their death with the utmost calmness and courage. The effect of this momentous stroke of vengeance upon these two patriot leaders, both of them good Catholics, who had always professed loyalty to their sovereign, and one of whom, Egmont, had performed distinguished services for his country and king, was profound. A wave of mingled rage and sorrow swept over the land. It was not only an act of cruel injustice, but even as an act of policy a blunder of the first magnitude, which was sure to bring, as it did bring, retribution in its train.
CHAPTER IV
THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS
The complete failure of the expeditions of Hoogstraeten and of Lewis of Nassau was a great discouragement to the Prince of Orange. Nevertheless after receiving the news of Jemmingen he wrote to his brother, "With God's help I am determined to go on." By great exertions he succeeded in gathering together a heterogeneous force of German and Walloon mercenaries numbering about 18,000 men, and with these in the beginning of October he crossed the frontier. But to maintain such a force in the field required far larger financial resources than William had at his disposal. Alva was aware of this, and, as the prince made his way into Brabant, he followed his steps with a small body of veteran troops, cutting off supplies and stragglers, but declining battle. The mercenaries, debarred from plunder and in arrears of pay, could not be kept together more than a few weeks. In November Orange withdrew into France and disbanded the remnants of his army. In disguise he managed to escape with some difficulty through France to Dillenburg. His brothers, Lewis and Henry, joined the Huguenot army under Coligny and took part in the battles of Moncontour and Jarnac.