rned home without having accomplished anything. At
the same time Philip sent further instructions to the regent to abate
nothing of the severity of the persecution.

Egmont was naturally indignant at the treatment he had received, while
the terrors of the Inquisition were steadily rousing the people to a
state of frenzied excitement. In 1566 a confederacy of the lesser
nobility was formed (_Les Gueux_) whose principles were set out in a
document known as the Compromise. From this league Egmont held aloof; he
declined to take any step savouring of actual disloyalty to his
sovereign. He withdrew to his government of Flanders, and as stadtholder
took active measures for the persecution of heretics. But in the eyes of
Philip he had long been a marked man. The Spanish king had temporized
only until the moment arrived when he could crush opposition by force.
In the summer of 1567 the duke of Alva was despatched to the Netherlands
at the head of an army of veterans to supersede the regent Margaret and
restore order in the discontented provinces. Orange fled to Germany
after having vainly warned Egmont and Horn of the dangers that
threatened them. Alva was at pains to lull their suspicions, and then
suddenly seized them both and threw them in the castle of Ghent. Their
trial was a farce, for their fate had already been determined before
Alva left Spain. After some months of imprisonment they were removed to
Brussels, where sentence was pronounced upon them (June 4) by the
infamous Council of Blood erected by Alva. They were condemned to death
for high treason. It was in vain that the most earnest intercessions
were made in behalf of Egmont by the emperor Maximilian, by the knights
of the order of the Golden Fleece, by the states of Brabant, and by
several of the German princes. Vain, too, was the pathetic pleading of
his wife, who with her eleven children was reduced to want, and had
taken refuge in a convent. Egmont was beheaded at Brussels in the square
before the town hall on the day after his sentence had been publicly
pronounced (June 5, 1568). He met his fate with calm resignation; and in
the storm of terror and exasperation to which this tragedy gave rise
Egmont's failings were forgotten, and he and his fellow-victim to
Spanish tyranny were glorified in the popular imagination as martyrs of
Flemish freedom. From this memorable event, which Goethe made the theme
of his play _Egmont_ (1788), is usually dated the beginning o