any interference on the part of the magistracy to wreak their will upon its splendid and priceless contents.
The effect of the outbreak was in every way disastrous. The regent was alienated from the popular leaders, and was no longer disposed to help William of Orange, Egmont, and Hoorn to secure a mitigation of religious persecution; and the heart of Philip was hardened in its resolve to exterminate heresy in the Netherlands. He dissembled until such time as he could despatch his greatest general, the duke of Alva, to Brussels at the head of a picked force to crush all opposition.
William of Orange was not deceived by the specious temporizing of the king. He foresaw the coming storm, and he did his utmost to induce Egmont, Hoorn and other prominent members of the patriotic party to unite with him in taking measures for meeting the approaching danger. Egmont and Hoorn refused to do anything that might be construed Flight of Orange. into disloyalty; in these circumstances William felt that the time had come to provide for his personal safety. He withdrew (April 1567) first to his residence at Breda, and then to the ancestral seat of his family at Dillenburg in Nassau.
Margaret of Parma meanwhile, with the aid of a considerable body of German mercenaries, had inflicted exemplary punishment upon the iconoclasts and Calvinist sectaries. A body of some 2000 men drawn principally from Antwerp were cut to pieces at Austruweel (March 13, 1567), and their leader John de Marnix, lord of Thouseule, Punishment of the sectaries. slain. Valenciennes, the chief centre of disturbance in the south, was besieged and taken by Philip de Noircarmes, governor of Hainault, who inflicted a savage vengeance (April 1567). The regent therefore represented to her brother that the disorders were entirely put down and that the time had come to show mercy. But Philip’s preparations were now complete, and Alva set out from Italy at the head of a force of some 10,000 veteran troops, Spaniards and Italians, afterwards increased by a body of Germans, with which, after marching through Burgundy, Lorraine and Luxemburg, he reached the Netherlands (August 8), and made his entry into Brussels a fortnight later.
The powers conferred on Alva were those of military dictator.
The title of regent was left to the duchess Margaret, but she
speedily sent in her resignation, which was accepted
(October 6). Before this took place events had been
moving fast. On the 9th of September Egmont and
Hoorn were arrested as they left a council at the duke’s
The Council of Blood.
residence and were confined in the castle of Ghent. At the same
time Orange’s friend, the powerful burgomaster of Antwerp,
Anthony van Stralen, was seized. The next step of Alva was
to create a special tribunal which was officially known as the
“Council of Troubles,” but was popularly branded with the name
of the “Council of Blood,” and as such it has passed down to
history. As a tribunal it had no legal status. The duke himself
was president and all sentences were submitted to him. Two
members only, Vargas and del Rio, both Spaniards, had votes.
A swarm of commissioners ransacked the provinces in search of
delinquents, and the council sat daily for hours, condemning the
accused, almost without a hearing, in batches together. The
executioners were ceaselessly at work with stake, sword and
Orange outlawed.
gibbet. Crowds of fugitives crossed the frontier to
seek refuge in Germany and England. The prince of
Orange was publicly declared an outlaw and his
property confiscated (January 24, 1568). A few weeks later his
eldest son, Philip William, count of Buren, a student at the
university of Louvain, was kidnapped and carried off to Madrid.
William had meanwhile succeeded in raising a force in Germany
with which his brother Louis invaded Friesland. He gained a
victory at Heiligerlee (May 23) over a Spanish force under Count
Aremberg. Aremberg himself was killed, as was Adolphus of
Nassau, a younger brother of William and Louis. But Alva
himself took the field, and at Jemmingen (July 21) completely
annihilated the force of Louis, who himself narrowly escaped
with his life. One result of the victory of Heiligerlee
Execution of
Egmont and Hoorn.
was the determination of Alva that Egmont and Hoorn
should die before he left Brussels for the campaign in
Friesland. They were pronounced by the Council of
Blood to be guilty of high treason (June 2, 1568).
On the 6th of June they were beheaded before the
Broodhuis at Brussels.
A few months after the disaster of Jemmingen, Orange, who had now become a Lutheran, himself led a large army into Brabant. He was met by Alva with cautious tactics. The Spaniards skilfully avoided a battle, and in November the invaders were compelled to withdraw across the French frontier through lack of resources, Alva triumphant. and were disbanded. Alva was triumphant; but though Alva’s master had supplied him with an invincible army, he was unable to furnish him with the funds to pay for it. Money had to be raised by taxation, and at a meeting of the states-general (March 20, 1569) the governor-general proposed (1) an immediate tax of 1% on all property, (2) a tax of 5% on all transfers of real estate, (3) a tax of 10% on the sale of all articles of commerce, the last two taxes to be granted in perpetuity. Everywhere the proposal met with uncompromising resistance. After a prolonged struggle, Alva succeeded in obtaining a subsidy of 2,000,000 fl. for two years only. All this time the brutal work of the Blood Council went on, as did the exodus of thousands upon thousands of industrious and well-to-do citizens, and with each year the detestation felt for Alva and his rule steadily increased.
All this time William and Louis were indefatigably making
preparations for a new campaign, and striving by their agents
to rouse the people to active resistance. The first
successes were however to be not on land, but on the
sea. In 1569 William in his capacity as sovereign
prince of Orange issued The Sea-Beggars.letters-of-marque to a number
of vessels to prey upon the Spanish commerce in the narrow
seas. These corsairs, for such they were, were known by the
name of Sea-Beggars (Gueux-de-Mer). Under the command of the
lord of Lumbres, the lord of Treslong, and William de la Marck
(lord of Lumey) they spread terror and alarm along the coast,
seized much plunder, and in revenge for Alva’s cruelty committed
acts of terrible barbarity upon the priests and monks and
Capture of Brill
and Flushing.
catholic officials, as well as upon the crews of the vessels that fell
into their hands. Their difficulty lay in the lack of ports in
which to take refuge. At last by a sudden assault the
Sea-Beggars seized the town of Brill at the mouth of
the Maas (April 1, 1572). Encouraged by this success
they next attacked and took Flushing, the port of
Zeeland, which commanded the approach to Antwerp; and the
inhabitants were compelled to take the oath to the prince of
Orange, as stadtholder of the king. They next mastered Delfshaven
and Schiedam. These striking successes caused a wave of
Revolt in the northern provinces.
revolt to spread through Holland, Zeeland, Gelderland,
Utrecht and Friesland. The principal towns gave in
their submission to the prince of Orange, and acknowledged
him as their lawful stadtholder. Within three
months of the capture of Brill, Amsterdam was the only town in
Holland in the hands of the Spaniards.
This revolt of the northern provinces was facilitated by the fact that Alva had withdrawn many of the garrisons, and was moving to oppose an invasion from the south. Louis of Nassau, with a small force raised in France with the The connivance of Charles IX., made a sudden dash into Hainault (May 1572) and captured Valenciennes and The campaign of Mons. Mons. Here he was shut in by a superior force of Spaniards, and made preparations to defend himself until relieved by the army which Orange was collecting on the eastern frontier. On the 9th of July William crossed the Rhine, and captured Malines, Termonde and Oudenarde, and was advancing southwards when the news reached him of the massacre of St Bartholomew, which deprived him of the promised aid of Coligny and his army of 12,000 men. He made an attempt, however, to relieve Mons, but his camp at Harmignies was surprised by a night attack, and William himself narrowly escaped capture. The next morning he retreated, and six days later Mons surrendered.
