In another letter to Philip, though of the same date, Alva recommends the king to summon the countess and her children to Spain; where her daughters might take the veil, and her sons be properly educated. "I do not believe," he adds, "that there is so unfortunate a family in the whole world. I am not sure that the countess has the means of procuring a supper this very evening!"[1192]
Philip, in answer to these letters, showed that he was not disposed to shrink from his own share of responsibility for the proceedings of his general. The duke, he said, had only done what justice and his duty demanded.[1193] He could have wished that the state of things had warranted a different result; nor could he help feeling deeply that measures like those to which he had been forced should have been necessary in his reign. "But," continued the king, "no man has a right to shrink from his duty.[1194]—I am well pleased," he concludes, "to learn that the two lords made so good and Catholic an end. As to what you recommend in regard to the countess of Egmont and her eleven children, I shall give all proper heed to it."[1195]
FATE OF EGMONT'S FAMILY.
The condition of the countess might well have moved the hardest heart to[{375}] pity. Denied all access to her husband, she had been unable to afford him that consolation which he so much needed during his long and dreary confinement. Yet she had not been idle; and, as we have seen, she was unwearied in her efforts to excite a sympathy in his behalf. Neither did she rely only on the aid which this world can give; and few nights passed during her lord's imprisonment in which she and her daughters might not be seen making their pious pilgrimages, barefooted, to the different churches of Brussels, to invoke the blessing of Heaven on their labors. She had been supported through this trying time by a reliance on the success of her endeavors, in which she was confirmed by the encouragement she received from the highest quarters. It is not necessary to give credit to the report of a brutal jest attributed to the duke of Alva, who, on the day preceding the execution, was said to have told the countess "to be of good cheer; for her husband would leave the prison on the morrow!"[1196] There is more reason to believe that the Emperor Maximilian, shortly before the close of the trial, sent a gentleman with a kind letter to the countess, testifying the interest he took in her affairs, and assuring her she had nothing to fear on account of her husband.[1197] On the very morning of Egmont's execution, she was herself, we are told, paying a visit of condolence to the countess of Aremberg, whose husband had lately fallen in the battle of Heyligerlee; and at her friend's house the poor lady is said to have received the first tidings of the fate of her lord.[1198]
The blow fell the heavier, that she was so ill prepared for it. On the same day she found herself, not only a widow, but a beggar,—with a family of orphan children in vain looking up to her for the common necessaries of life.[1199] In her extremity, she resolved to apply to the king himself. She found an apology for it in the necessity of transmitting to Philip her husband's letter to him, which, it seems, had been intrusted to her care.[1200] She apologizes for not sooner sending this last and most humble petition of her deceased lord, by the extreme wretchedness of her situation, abandoned, as she is, by all, far from kindred and country.[1201] She trusts in his majesty's benignity and compassion[1202] to aid her sons by receiving them into his service when they shall be of sufficient age. This will oblige her, during the remainder of her sad days, and her children after her, to pray God for the long and happy life of his majesty.[1203]—It must have given another pang to the heart of the[{376}] widowed countess, to have been thus forced to solicit aid from the very hand that had smitten her. But it was the mother pleading for her children.
Yet Philip, notwithstanding his assurances to the duke of Alva, showed no alacrity in relieving the wants of the countess. On the first of September the duke again wrote, to urge the necessity of her case, declaring that, if it had not been for a "small sum that he had himself sent, she and the children would have perished of hunger!"[1204]
The misfortunes of this noble lady excited commiseration not only at home, but in other countries of Europe, and especially in Germany, the land of her birth.[1205] Her brother, the elector of Bavaria, wrote to Philip, to urge the restitution of her husband's estates to his family. Other German princes preferred the same request, which was moreover formally made by the emperor, through his ambassador at Madrid. Philip coolly replied, that "the time for this had not yet come."[1206] A moderate pension, meanwhile, was annually paid by Alva to the countess of Egmont, who survived her husband ten years,—not long enough to see her children established in possession of their patrimony.[1207] Shortly before her death, her eldest son, then grown to man's estate, chafing under the sense of injustice to himself and his family, took part in the war against the Spaniards. Philip, who may perhaps have felt some compunction for the ungenerous requital he had made for the father's services, not only forgave this act of disloyalty in the son, but three years later allowed the young man to resume his allegiance, and placed him in full possession of the honors and estates of his ancestors.[1208]
Alva, as we have seen, in his letters to Philip, had dwelt on the important effects of Egmont's execution. He did not exaggerate these effects. But he sorely mistook the nature of them. Abroad, the elector of Bavaria at once threw his whole weight into the scale of Orange and the party of reform.[1209] Others of the German princes followed his example; and Maximilian's ambassador at Madrid informed Philip that the execution of the two nobles, by the indignation it had caused throughout Germany, had wonderfully served the designs of the prince of Orange.[1210][{377}]
SENTIMENT OF THE PEOPLE.
At home the effects were not less striking. The death of these two illustrious men, following so close upon the preceding executions, spread a deep gloom over the country. Men became possessed with the idea that the reign of blood was to be perpetual.[1211] All confidence was destroyed, even that confidence which naturally exists between parent and child, between brother and brother.[1212] The foreign merchant caught somewhat of this general distrust, and refused to send his commodities to a country where they were exposed to confiscation.[1213] Yet among the inhabitants indignation was greater than even fear or sorrow;[1214] and the Flemings who had taken part in the prosecution of Egmont trembled before the wrath of an avenging people.[1215] Such were the effects produced by the execution of men whom the nation reverenced as martyrs in the cause of freedom. Alva notices these consequences in his letters to the king. But though he could discern the signs of the times, he little dreamed of the extent of the troubles they portended. "The people of this country," he writes, "are of so easy a temper, that, when your majesty shall think fit to grant them a general pardon, your clemency, I trust, will make them as prompt to render you their obedience as they are now reluctant to do it."[1216]—The haughty soldier, in his contempt for the peaceful habits of a burgher population, comprehended as little as his master the true character of the men of the Netherlands.[{378}]