lamentation et juste compassion qu'aviont tous ceux de
la ville du dit Bruxelles, nobles et ignobles, pour ceste barbare
tyrannie, mais que nonobstant, ce cestuy Nero d'Alve se vante en ferat
le semblable de tous ceulx quy potra avoir en mains." P. 241.

[1108] If we are to believe Bentivoglio, Backerzele was torn asunder by
horses. "Da quattro cavalli fu smembrato vivo in Brusselles il Casembrot
gia segretario dell'Agamonte." (Guerra di Fiandra, p. 200.) But Alva's
character, hard and unscrupulous as he may have been in carrying out his
designs, does not warrant the imputation of an act of such wanton
cruelty as this. Happily it is not justified by historic testimony; no
notice of the fact being found in Strada, or Meteren, or the author of
the Guerres Civiles du Pays-Bas, not to add other writers of the time,
who cannot certainly be charged with undue partiality to the Spaniards.
If so atrocious a deed had been perpetrated, it would be passing strange
that it should not have found a place in the catalogue of crimes imputed
to Alva by the prince of Orange. See, in particular, his letter to
Schwendi, written in an agony of grief and indignation, soon after he
had learned the execution of his friends. Archives de la Maison
d'Orange-Nassau, tom. III. p. 244.

[1109] Bor, the old Dutch historian, contemporary with these events,
says that, "if it had not been for the countess-dowager, Hoorne's
step-mother, that noble would actually have starved in prison from want
of money to procure himself food!" Arend, Algemeene Geschiedenis des
Vaderlands, D. II. St. v. bl. 37.

[1110] "Ce dernier fait chaque jour des aveux, et on peut s'attendre
qu'il dira des merveilles, lorsqu'il sera mis a la torture."
Correspondance de Philippe II., tom. I. p. 589.

[1111] Vandervynckt, Troubles des Pays-Bas, tom. II. p. 247.

[1112] The _Interrogatoires_, filling nearly fifty octavo pages, were
given to the public by the late Baron Reiffenberg, at the end of his
valuable compilation of the correspondence of Margaret. Both the
questions and answers, strange as it may seem, were originally drawn up
in Castilian. A French version was immediately made by the secretary
Pratz,--probably for the benefit of the Flemish councillors of the
bloody tribunal. Both the Castilian and French MSS. were preserved in
the archives of the house of Egmont until the middle of the last
century, when an unworthy heir of this ancient line suffered them to
pass into ot