The route lay via Alessandria de la Paille, St. Ambroise, Aosta, Turin, the Mont Cenis, St. Jean de Maurienne, and the valley of the Arve through Savoy. In spite of his small array it was necessary to divide the army into three parts, the advance guard, the “battle,” and the rear guard. The “battle” each day occupied the place abandoned by the advance guard and was itself in turn replaced by the rear guard, the three divisions of the army marching one day apart. The duke of Alva commanded the advance guard, his son Don Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo the “battle;” while the rear guard was under the command of the Italian, Ciappin-Vitelli, Marquis of Cetona formally in the service of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The army thus divided occupied fourteen days in traversing Savoy. It was a long and toilsome journey through a wild and mountainous country, where the difficulties of the march were increased by constant dread of famine. In many places the country was completely sterile. In Burgundy the march was easier and twelve days brought the army via Dôle and Gray to Fonteney near Toul, whence twelve days more brought Alva by Thionville to Luxembourg (July 29), where he was joined by new forces.[1070]
In spite of the length of the march and the hardships of it, the duke retained his traditional iron discipline and the soldiers were not allowed to forage upon the country or to break ranks.[1071]
On August 12, 1567, the duke of Alva entered Brussels. General terror prevailed in the Low Countries upon his arrival. The Prince of Orange left the land. Count Egmont, naïvely declaring that he had done nothing wrong, remained; his friend Hoorne imitated his example. Alva at once sent away all the Flemish soldiers and quartered the city with the new troops. In order to facilitate his policy the duke created a special tribunal, not composed of lawyers “because they would not condemn without proofs.” This was the famous Council of Troubles which the people called the “Council of Blood.” The members of it held no commissions from the King, but were the simple agents of the duke of Alva. The most celebrated of them was a certain Vargas, a criminal himself, against whom action had been suspended in return for his infamous services.
If the policy of the Spanish government in Flanders took a new and different form with the coming of Alva, the revolution there was no less changed. The cardinal Granvella some months before this time had written to Philip II: “It is a general rule, in matters of state, that popular enterprises, if they do not terminate in the first outburst, generally vanish in smoke if the remedy for them be applied before they have time to follow up the movement.”[1072] He added that contemporary history afforded some striking examples of the truth of this observation. But the provinces he had lately governed were not of this category. For it is clear that a change had taken place in the nature of the Flemish revolt in the years 1565-67. The revolution by this time had passed through the earlier stages of defiance and rebellion and developed an organization with a definite, set purpose before it. The formation of the Gueux was the clearest manifestation of this change. In its inception this famous group was an aristocratic body, composed solely of nobles, and the Spanish government had little fear then of its becoming a popular association.[1073] Granvella saw the similarity of the Gueux to the Huguenot association formed at Orleans in 1562, but he did not anticipate the popular nature it was soon to develop.[1074]
He was soon disillusioned. What was believed by the Spanish government to be a somewhat close political and aristocratic combination of nobles before long became a popular confederation of congregations having a religious propaganda, as well as a political purpose.[1075] Despite this change, however, Philip’s minister did not yet believe the Gueux to be formidable. As Alva had declared at Bayonne that all that was necessary to destroy the Huguenot party in France was to kill the “big fish,” so he now believed that if the leaders of the Gueux were cut off, their movement would die too.[1076] But Alva soon discovered that the Gueux were hardly ever weakened by the detachment of certain of the nobles either by bribery or intimidation.[1077] By the time of his arrival, under Brederode’s able leadership, the Calvinists of the Flemish provinces had worked out a scheme of union in which every congregation was at once a parish, a rating precinct, a military hundred, and a political unit. Antwerp, whose population was so large and so cosmopolitan that police scrutiny could be easily evaded, and from which it was easy to make one’s escape, was the capital of the association, as Orleans first, and later La Rochelle, was for the Huguenots.[1078]
The Flemish government was soon alive to the necessity of breaking the power of this confederation.[1079] Membership in the confederation, if proved, was heavily punished. The retirement of the prince of Orange from the land was believed by the government to be due to a prudent effort to avoid being so compromised. It was certainly true of Brederode. But Egmont and Hoorne remained, declaring they had done nothing, and renewed their oath of allegiance to the King.[1080] Nevertheless Granvella sarcastically quoted Lycurgus that neutrals were more odious than enemies. “After the towns have been cleared out,” wrote the provost Morillon, “it will be time to attack the garden in order to destroy the weeds and roots there,” and Spain’s agent at Amsterdam at the same time wrote: “God may pardon those who are the cause of one and the other league; but I assure you, unless I am much mistaken, that those who have made others to dance, have some other purpose than we know. Time will discover it.”[1081]
EXECUTION OF EGMONT AND HOORNE
IN THE MARKET SQUARE AT BRUSSELS