On the fourth of January, 1568, we find eighty-four persons sentenced to death at Valenciennes, on the charge of having taken part in the late movements,—religious or political.[1053] On the twentieth of February, ninety-five persons were arraigned before the Council of Blood, and thirty-seven capitally convicted.[1054] On the twentieth of March thirty-five more were condemned.[1055] The governor's emissaries were out in every direction. "I heard that preaching was going on at Antwerp," he writes to Philip; "and I sent my own provost there, for I cannot trust the authorities. He arrested a good number of heretics. They will never attend another such meeting. The magistrates complain that the interference of the provost was a violation of their privileges. The magistrates may as well take it patiently."[1056] The pleasant manner in which the duke talks over the fate of his victims[{342}] with his master may remind one of the similar dialogues between Petit André and Louis the Eleventh, in "Quentin Durward."
The proceedings in Ghent may show the course pursued in the other cities. Commissioners were sent to that capital, to ferret out the suspected. No than a hundred and forty-seven were summoned before the council at Brussels. Their names were cried about the streets, and posted up in placards on the public buildings. Among them were many noble and wealthy individuals. The officers were particularly instructed to ascertain the wealth of the parties. Most of the accused contrived to make their escape. They preferred flight to the chance of an acquittal by the bloody tribunal,—though flight involved certain banishment and confiscation of property. Eighteen only answered the summons by repairing to Brussels. They were all arrested on the same day, at their lodgings, and, without exception, were sentenced to death! Five or six of the principal were beheaded. The rest perished on the gallows.[1057]
TRIALS AND EXECUTIONS.
Impatient of what seemed to him a too tardy method of following up his game, the duke determined on a bolder movement, and laid his plans for driving a goodly number of victims into the toils at once. He fixed on Ash Wednesday for the time,—the beginning of Lent, when men, after the Carnival was past, would be gathered soberly in their own dwellings.[1058] The officers of justice entered their premises at dead of night; and no less than five hundred citizens were dragged from their beds and hurried off to prison.[1059] They all received sentence of death![1060] "I have reiterated the sentence again and again," he writes to Philip, "for they torment me with inquiries whether in this or that case it might not be commuted for banishment. They weary me of my life with their importunities."[1061] He was not too weary, however, to go on with the bloody work; for in the same letter we find him reckoning[{343}] that three hundred heads more must fall before it will be time to talk of a general pardon.[1062]
It was common, says an old chronicler, to see thirty or forty persons arrested at once. The wealthier burghers might be seen, with their arms pinioned behind them, dragged at the horse's tail to the place of execution.[1063] The poorer sort were not even summoned to take their trial in Brussels. Their cases were despatched at once, and they were hung up, without further delay, in the city or in the suburbs.[1064]
Brandt, in his History of the Reformation, has collected many particulars respecting the persecution, especially in his own province of Holland, during that "reign of terror." Men of lower consideration, when dragged to prison, were often cruelly tortured on the rack, to extort confessions, implicating themselves or their friends. The modes of death adjudged by the bloody tribunal were various. Some were beheaded with the sword,—a distinction reserved, as it would seem, for persons of condition. Some were sentenced to the gibbet, and others to the stake.[1065] This last punishment, the most dreadful of all, was confined to the greater offenders against religion. But it seems to have been left much to the caprice of the judges, sometimes even of the brutal soldiery who superintended the executions. At least we find the Spanish soldiers, on one occasion, in their righteous indignation, throwing into the flames an unhappy Protestant preacher whom the court had sentenced to the gallows.[1066]
The soldiers of Alva were many of them veterans who had borne arms against the Protestants under Charles the Fifth,—comrades of the men who at that very time were hunting down the natives of the New World, and slaughtering them by thousands in the name of religion. With them the sum and substance of religion were comprised in a blind faith in the Romish Church, and in uncompromising hostility to the heretic. The life of the heretic was the most acceptable sacrifice that could be offered to Jehovah. With hearts thus seared by fanaticism, and made callous by long familiarity with human suffering, they were the very ministers to do the bidding of such a master as the duke of Alva.
The cruelty of the persecutors was met by an indomitable courage on the part of their victims. Most of the offences were, in some way or other, connected with religion. The accused were preachers, or had aided and comforted the preachers, or had attended their services, or joined the consistories, or afforded evidence, in some form, that they had espoused the damnable doctrines of heresy. It is precisely in such a case, where men are called to suffer for conscience' sake, that they are prepared to endure all,—to die in defence of their opinions. The storm of persecution fell on persons of every condition; men and women, the young, the old, the infirm and helpless. But the weaker the party, the more did the spirit rise to endure his sufferings. Many affecting instances are recorded of persons who, with no support but their trust in heaven, displayed the most heroic fortitude in the presence of[{344}] their judges, and, by the boldness with which they asserted their opinions, seemed even to court the crown of martyrdom. On the scaffold and at the stake this intrepid spirit did not desert them; and the testimony they bore to the truth of the cause for which they suffered had such an effect on the bystanders, that it was found necessary to silence them. A cruel device for more effectually accomplishing this was employed by the officials. The tip of the tongue was seared with a red-hot iron, and the swollen member then compressed between two plates of metal screwed fast together. Thus gagged, the groans of the wretched sufferer found vent in strange sounds, that excited the brutal merriment of his tormentors.[1067]
But it is needless to dwell longer on the miseries endured by the people of the Netherlands in this season of trial. Yet, if the cruelties perpetrated in the name of religion are most degrading to humanity, they must be allowed to have called forth the most sublime spectacle which humanity can present,—that of the martyr offering up his life on the altar of principle.
It is difficult—in fact, from the data in my possession, not possible—to calculate the number of those who fell by the hand of the executioner in this dismal persecution.[1068] The number, doubtless, was not great as compared with the population of the country,—not so great as we may find left, almost every year of our lives, on a single battle-field. When the forms of legal proceedings are maintained, the movements of justice—if the name can be so profaned—are comparatively tardy. It is only, as in the French Revolution, when thousands are swept down by the cannon, or whole cargoes of wretched victims are plunged at once into the waters, that death moves on with the gigantic stride of pestilence and war.