[1063] "Les Bourgeois qui estoyët riches de quarante, soixante, et cent mille florins, il les faysoit attacher à la queuë d'un cheval, et ainsi les faysoit trainer, ayant les mains liées sur les dos, jusques au lieu où on les debvoit pendre." Meteren, Hist. des Pays-Bas, fol. 55.
[1064] Ibid., ubi supra.
[1065] "Ille [Vargas] promiscuè laqueo, igne, homines enecare." Reidanus, Annales, p. 6.
[1066] Brandt, Reformation in the Low Countries, vol. I. p. 274.
[1067] "Hark how they sing!" exclaimed a friar in the crowd; "should they not be made to dance too?" Brandt, Reformation in the Low Countries, vol. I. p. 275.
[1068] It will be understood that I am speaking of the period embraced in this portion of the history, terminating at the beginning of June, 1568, when the Council of Blood had been in active operation about four months,—the period when the sword of legal persecution fell heaviest. Alva, in the letter above cited to Philip, admits eight hundred—including three hundred to be examined after Easter—as the number of victims. (Documentos Inéditos, tom. IV. p. 489.) Viglius, in a letter of the twenty-ninth of March, says fifteen hundred had been already cited before the tribunal, the greater part of whom—they had probably fled the country—were condemned for contumacy. (Epist. ad Hopperum, p. 415.) Grotius, alluding to this period, speaks even more vaguely of the multitude of the victims, as innumerable. "Stipatæ reis custodiæ, innumeri mortales necati: ubique una species ut captæ civitatis." (Annales, p. 29.) So also Hooft, cited by Brandt: "The gallows, the wheels, stakes, and trees in the highways, were loaden with carcasses or limbs of such as had been hanged, beheaded, or roasted; so that the air, which God had made for respiration of the living, was now become the common grave or habitation of the dead." (Reformation in the Low Countries, vol. I. p. 261.) Language like this, however expressive, does little for statistics.
[1069] Correspondance de Philippe II., tom. II. p. 4.
[1070] Sentences passed by the Council of Blood against a great number of individuals—two thousand or more—have been collected in a little volume, (Sententien en Indagingen van Alba,) published at Amsterdam, in 1735. The parties condemned were for the most part natives of Holland, Zealand, and Utrecht. They would seem, with very few exceptions, to have been absentees, and, being pronounced guilty of contumacy, were sentenced to banishment and the confiscation of their property. The volume furnishes a more emphatic commentary on the proceedings of Alva than anything which could come from the pen of the historian.
[1071] "Acabando este castigo comenzaré á prender algunos particulares de los mas culpados y mas ricos para moverlos á que vengan á composición." Documentos Inéditos, tom. IV. p. 489.
[1072] "Destos tales se saque todo el golpe de dinero que sea possible." Ibid., ubi supra.