Holland: The History of the Netherlands

by Thomas Colley Grattan

Alva first turned his attention to the seizure of those patriot lords whose pertinacious infatuation left them within his reach. He summoned a meeting of all the members of the council of state and the knights of the order of the Golden Fleece, to deliberate on matters of great importance. Counts Egmont and Horn attended, among many others; and at the conclusion of the council they were both arrested (some historians assert by the hands of Alva and his eldest son), as was also Van Straeten, burgomaster of Antwerp, and Casambrot, Egmont's secretary. The young count of Mansfield appeared for a moment at this meeting; but, warned by his father of the fate intended him, as an original member of the confederation, he had time to fly. The count of Hoogstraeten was happily detained by illness, and thus escaped the fate of his friends. Egmont and Horn were transferred to the citadel of Ghent, under an escort of three thousand Spanish soldiers. Several other persons of the first families were arrested; and those who had originally been taken in arms were executed without delay.

[Illustration: STORMING THE BARRICADES AT BRUSSELS DURING THE
REVOLUTION OF 1848.]

The next measures of the new governor were the reestablishment of the Inquisition, the promulgation of the decrees of the Council of Trent, the revocation of the duchess of Parma's edicts, and the royal refusal to recognize the terms of her treaties with the Protestants. He immediately established a special tribunal, composed of twelve members, with full powers to inquire into and pronounce judgment on every circumstance connected with the late troubles. He named himself president of this council, and appointed a Spaniard, named Vargas, as vice-president—a wretch of the most diabolical cruelty. Several others of the judges were also Spaniards, in direct infraction of the fundamental laws of the country. This council, immortalized by its infamy, was named by the new governor (for so Alva was in fact, though not yet in name), the Council of Troubles. By the people it was soon designed the Council of Blood. In its atrocious proceedings no respect was paid to titles, contracts, or privileges, however sacred. Its judgments were without appeal. Every subject of the state was amenable to its summons; clergy and laity, the first individuals of the country, as well as the most wretched outcasts of society. Its decrees were passed with disgusting rapidity and contempt of form. Contumacy was punished with exile and confiscation. Those who, strong in innocence, dared to brave a trial were lost without resource. The accused were forced to its bar without previous warning. Many a wealthy citizen was dragged to trial four leagues' distance, tied to a horse's tail. The number of victims was appalling. On one occasion, the town of Valenciennes alone saw fifty-five of its citizens fall by the hands of the executioner. Hanging, beheading, quartering and burning were the every-day spectacles. The enormous confiscations only added to the thirst for gold and blood by which Alva and his satellites were parched. History offers no example of parallel horrors; for while party vengeance on other occasions has led to scenes of fury and terror, they arose, in this instance, from the vilest cupidity and the most cold-blooded cruelty.

After three months of such atrocity, Alva, fatigued rather than satiated with butchery, resigned his hateful functions wholly into the hands of Vargas, who was chiefly aided by the members Delrio and Dela Torre. Even at this remote period we cannot repress the indignation excited by the mention of those monsters, and it is impossible not to feel satisfaction in fixing upon their names the brand of historic execration. One of these wretches, called Hesselts, used at length to sleep during the mock trials of the already doomed victims; and as often as he was roused up by his colleagues, he used to cry out mechanically, "To the gibbet! to the gibbet!" so familiar was his tongue with the sounds of condemnation.

The despair of the people may be imagined from the fact that, until the end of the year 1567, their only consolation was the prospect of the king's arrival! He never dreamed of coming. Even the delight of feasting in horrors like these could not conquer his indolence. The good duchess of Parma—for so she was in comparison with her successor—was not long left to oppose the feeble barrier of her prayers between Alva and his victims. She demanded her dismissal from the nominal dignity, which was now but a title of disgrace. Philip granted it readily, accompanied by a hypocritical letter, a present of thirty thousand crowns, and the promise of an annual pension of twenty thousand more. She left Brussels in the month of April, 1568, raised to a high place in the esteem and gratitude of the people, less by any actual claims from her own conduct than by its fortuitous contrast with the infamy of her successor. She retired to Italy, and died at Naples in the month of February, 1586.

Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, duke of Alva, was of a distinguished family in Spain, and even boasted of his descent from one of the Moorish monarchs who had reigned in the insignificant kingdom of Toledo. When he assumed the chief command in the Netherlands, he was sixty years of age; having grown old and obdurate in pride, ferocity, and avarice. His deeds must stand instead of a more detailed portrait, which, to be thoroughly striking, should be traced with a pen dipped in blood. He was a fierce and clever soldier, brought up in the school of Charles V., and trained to his profession in the wars of that monarch in Germany, and subsequently in that of Philip II. against France. In addition to the horrors acted by the Council of Blood, Alva committed many deeds of collateral but minor tyranny; among others, he issued a decree forbidding, under severe penalties, any inhabitant of the country to marry without his express permission. His furious edicts against emigration were attempted to be enforced in vain. Elizabeth of England opened all the ports of her kingdom to the Flemish refugees, who carried with them those abundant stores of manufacturing knowledge which she wisely knew to be the elements of national wealth.

Alva soon summoned the Prince of Orange, his brothers, and all the confederate lords, to appear before the council and answer to the charge of high treason. The prince gave a prompt and contemptuous answer, denying the authority of Alva and his council, and acknowledging for his judges only the emperor, whose vassal he was, or the king of Spain in person, as president of the order of the Golden Fleece. The other lords made replies nearly similar. The trials of each were, therefore, proceeded on, by contumacy; confiscation of property being an object almost as dear to the tyrant viceroy as the death of his victims. Judgments were promptly pronounced against those present or absent, alive or dead. Witness the case of the unfortunate marquess of Bergues, who had previously expired at Madrid, as was universally believed, by poison; and his equally ill-fated colleague in the embassy, the Baron Montigny, was for a while imprisoned at Segovia, where he was soon after secretly beheaded, on the base pretext of former disaffection.

The departure of the duchess of Parma having left Alva undisputed as well as unlimited authority, he proceeded rapidly in his terrible career. The count of Beuren was seized at Louvain, and sent prisoner to Madrid; and wherever it was possible to lay hands on a suspected patriot, the occasion was not neglected. It would be a revolting task to enter into a minute detail of all the horrors committed, and impossible to record the names of the victims who so quickly fell before Alva's insatiate cruelty. The people were driven to frenzy. Bands of wretches fled to the woods and marshes; whence, half famished and perishing for want, they revenged themselves with pillage and murder. Pirates infested and ravaged the coast; and thus, from both sea and land, the whole extent of the Netherlands was devoted to carnage and ruin. The chronicles of Brabant and Holland, chiefly written in Flemish by contemporary authors, abound in thrilling details of the horrors of this general desolation, with long lists of those who perished. Suffice it to say, that, on the recorded boast of Alva himself, he caused eighteen thousand inhabitants of the Low Countries to perish by the hands of the executioner, during his less than six years' sovereignty in the Netherlands.

The most important of these tragical scenes was now soon to be acted. The Counts Egmont and Horn, having submitted to some previous interrogatories by Vargas and others, were removed from Ghent to Brussels, on the 3d of June, under a strong escort. The following day they passed through the mockery of a trial before the Council of Blood; and on the 5th they were both beheaded in the great square of Brussels, in the presence of Alva, who gloated on the spectacle from a balcony that commanded the execution. The same day Van Straeten, and Casambrot shared the fate of their illustrious friends, in the castle of Vilvorde; with many others whose names only find a place in the local chronicles of the times. Egmont and Horn met their fate with the firmness expected from their well-proved courage.

These judicial murders excited in the Netherlands an agitation without bounds. It was no longer hatred or aversion that filled men's minds, but fury and despair. The outbursting of a general revolt was hourly watched for. The foreign powers, without exception, expressed their disapproval of these executions. The emperor Maximilian II., and all the Catholic princes, condemned them. The former sent his brother expressly to the king of Spain, to warn him that without a cessation of his cruelties he could not restrain a general declaration from the members of the empire, which would, in all likelihood, deprive him of every acre of land in the Netherlands. The princes of the Protestant states held no terms in the expression of their disgust and resentment; and everything seemed now ripe, both at home and abroad, to favor the enterprise on which the Prince of Orange was determined to risk his fortune and his life. But his principal resources were to be found in his genius and courage, and in the heroic devotion partaken by his whole family in the cause of their country. His brother, Count John, advanced him a considerable sum of money; the Flemings and Hollanders, in England and elsewhere, subscribed largely; the prince himself, after raising loans in every possible way on his private means, sold his jewels, his plate, and even the furniture of his houses, and threw the amount into the common fund.