The birds were silent in the fruit garden, and all the flowers were closed away and hidden in the night.
Count Aremberg lay lonely with a crucifix on his breast and his cloak folded straight; but throughout the night Louis kept company with his brother, kneeling on the boards beside his bed and wetting the blood-stained banner with his tears, while the heads of the two young warriors, still so alike, rested for the last time on the same pillow, touched, for the last time, cheek to cheek and lip to lip.
CHAPTER V
NEWS FROM THE NETHERLANDS
The news of the dear-bought victory of Heiliger Lee was late in coming to Dillenburg; it was soon followed by the tale of the complete rout and loss of the third party of the invaders, who had invaded Artois under the Seigneur de Cocqueville. He and his entire force had been cut down at St. Valéry, and the survivors of the defeat had been instantly hanged.
From Brussels, too, came other news, as disastrous as sad. Alva's wrath had found a swift vent; the impudence of the "master beggars," as Meghem had called them, who had dared to defeat Alva's veteran troops and slay his general, was cruelly revenged on those in Alva's power who were suspected of sympathy with the rebels.
The members of the House of Nassau and their adherents were banished on pain of death, and their property confiscated.
On the ruins of the Culemburg Palace, which he had burnt to the ground, was erected a pillar commemorating the hatching and overthrow of the "beggar" conspiracy which had begun at the famous banquet held between their walls; and before this desolated spot, eighteen nobles and gentlemen were publicly executed, their heads and bodies afterwards being fastened to stakes and left to moulder on the horse market.
And a few days later Egmont and Hoorne were brought to Brussels, and Alva filled in the blank death-warrants signed by Philip and brought from Spain, with the names of two of the most illustrious men in the Netherlands and the most obstinately loyal to Spain of all those Netherland nobles who had hated Granvelle and served Philip.
And on the sixth day of June the most awful blow yet struck at the Netherlands fell, and Lamoral Egmont, Prince of Gravern, Stadtholder of Flanders, victor of St. Quentin and Gravelines, and Philip Montmorency, Count Hoorne and High Admiral, both councillors of the Netherlands and Knights of the Golden Fleece, were publicly executed in the great square at Brussels.
The whole country shuddered to the heart, and the hatred of Alva grew to a passion and a fury.