According to almost all accounts, the epidemic, for the madness resembled a disease, first appeared at St. Omer (Aug. 14th, 1566), then at Ypres, and extended rapidly to other towns. It came to a height at Antwerp (16th and 17th Aug. 1566), when the mob sacked the great cathedral and destroyed some of its richest treasures.[260] An eye-witness declared that the rioters in the cathedral did not number more than one hundred men, women, and boys, drawn from the dregs of the population, and that the attacks on the other churches were made by small parties of ten or twelve persons.
These outrages had a disastrous effect on the Reformation movement in the Netherlands, both immediately and in the future. They at once exasperated the more liberal-minded Roman Catholics and enraged the Regent: they began that gradual cleavage which ended in the separation of the Protestant North from the Romanist South. The Regent felt herself justified in practically withdrawing all the privileges she had accorded to the Reformed, and in raising German and Walloon troops to overawe the Protestants. The presence of these troops irritated some of the Calvinist nobles, and John de Marnix, elder brother of Sainte Aldegonde, attempted to seize the Island of Walcheren in order to hold it as a city of refuge for his persecuted brethren. He was unsuccessful; a fight took place not far from Antwerp itself, in which de Marnix was routed and slain (March 13th, 1567).
§ 5. William of Orange.
Meanwhile William of Orange had come to the conclusion that Philip was meditating the suppression of the rights and liberties of the Low Countries by Spanish troops, and was convinced that the great nobles who had hitherto headed the constitutional opposition would be the first to be attacked. He had conferences with Egmont and Hoorn at Dendermonde (Oct. 3rd, 1566), and at Willebroek (April 2nd, 1567), and endeavoured to persuade them that the only course open to them was to resist by force of arms. His arguments were unavailing, and William sadly determined that he must leave the country and retire to his German estates.
His forebodings were only too correct. Philip had resolved to send the Duke of Alva to subdue the Netherlands. A force of nine thousand veteran Spanish infantry with thirteen hundred Italian cavalry had been collected from the garrisons of Lombardy and Naples, and Alva began a long, difficult march over the Mt. Cenis and through Franche-Comté, Lorraine, and Luxemburg. William had escaped just in time. When the Duke arrived in Brussels and presented his credentials to the Council of State, it was seen that the King had bestowed on him such extensive powers that Margaret remained Regent in name only. One of his earliest acts was to get possession of the persons of Counts Egmont and Hoorn, with their private secretaries, and to imprison Antony van Straelen, Burgomaster of Antwerp, and a confidential friend of the Prince of Orange. Many other arrests were made; and Alva, having caught his victims, invented an instrument to help him to dispose of them.
By the mere fiat of his will he created a judicial chamber, whose decisions were to override those of any other court of law in the Netherlands, and which was to be responsible to none, not even to the Council of State. It was called the Council of Tumults, but is better known by its popular name, The Bloody Tribunal. It consisted of twelve members, among whom were Barlaymont and a few of the most violent Romanists of the Netherlands; but only two, Juan de Vargas and del Rio, both Spaniards, were permitted to vote and influence the decisions. Del Rio was a nonentity; but de Vargas was a very stern reality—a man of infamous life, equally notorious for the delight he took in slaughtering his fellow-men and the facility with which he murdered the Latin language! He brought the whole population of the Netherlands within the grip of the public executioner by his indictment: Hæretici fraxerunt templa, boni nihil faxerunt contra; ergo debent omnes patibulure: by which he meant, The heretics have broken open churches, the orthodox have done nothing to hinder them; therefore they ought all of them to be hanged together. Alva reserved all final decisions for his own judgment, in order that the work might be thoroughly done. He wrote to the King, “Men of law only condemn for crimes that are proved, whereas your Majesty knows that affairs of State are governed by very different rules from the laws which they have here.”
At its earlier sittings this terrible tribunal defined the crime of treason, and stated that its punishment was death. The definition extended to eighteen articles, and declared it to be treason—to have presented or signed any petition against the new bishoprics, the Inquisition, or the Placards; to have tolerated public preaching under any circumstances; to have omitted to resist iconoclasm, or field-preaching, or the presentation of the Request; to have asserted that the King had not the right to suspend the charters of the provinces; or to maintain that the Council of Tumults had not a right to override all the laws and privileges of the Netherlands. All these things were treason, and all of them were capital offences. Proof was not required; all that was needed was reasonable suspicion, or rather what the Duke of Alva believed to be so. The Council soon got to work. It sent commissioners through every part of the land—towns, villages, districts—to search for any who might be suspected of having committed any act which could be included within their definition of treason. Informers were invited, were bribed, to come forward; and soon shoals of denunciations and evidence flowed in to them. The accused were brought before the Council, tried (if the procedure could be called a trial), and condemned in batches. The records speak of ninety-five, eighty-four, forty-six, thirty-five at a time. Alva wrote to Philip that no fewer than fifteen hundred had been taken in their beds early on Ash-Wednesday morning, and later he announces another batch of eight hundred. In each case he adds, “I have ordered all of them to be executed.” In view of these records, the language of a contemporary chronicler does not appeared exaggerated:
“The gallows, the wheel, stakes, trees along the highways, were laden with carcasses or limbs of those who had been hanged, beheaded, or roasted; so that the air which God made for the respiration of the living, was now become the common grave or habitation of the dead. Every day produced fresh objects of pity and of mourning, and the noise of the bloody passing-bell was continually heard, which by the martyrdom of this man’s cousin, and the other’s brother or friend, rang dismal peals in the hearts of the survivors.”[261]
Whole families left their dwellings to shelter themselves in the woods, and, goaded by their misery, pillaged and plundered. The priests had been active as informers, and these Wild-Beggars, as they were called, “made excursions on them, serving themselves of the darkest nights for revenge and robbery, punishing them not only by despoiling them of their goods, but by disfiguring their faces, cutting off ears and noses.” The country was in a state of anarchy.