housand rebels.

[Letter of Alva to the Council of State. Correspondanee du Duc
d'Albe, 158. The same letter is published in Igor, iv. 245, 246.
All writers allow seven thousand to have been killed on the patriot
side, and--the number of Spaniards slain is not estimated at more
than eighty, even by the patriotic Meteren, 55. Compare Bor, iv.
245-246; Herrera, av. 696; Hoofd, v, 176, and Mendoza, 72.]

The swift ebb-tide swept the hats of the perishing wretches in such
numbers down the stream, that the people at Embden knew the result of the
battle in an incredibly short period of time. The skirmishing had lasted
from ten o'clock till one, but the butchery continued much longer. It
took time to slaughter even unresisting victims. Large numbers obtained
refuge for the night upon an island in the river. At low water next day
the Spaniards waded to them, and slew every man. Many found concealment
in hovels, swamps, and thickets, so that the whole of the following day
was occupied in ferreting out and despatching them. There was so much to
be done, that there was work enough for all. "Not a soldier," says, with
great simplicity, a Spanish historian who fought in the battle, "not a
soldier, nor even a lad, who wished to share in the victory, but could
find somebody to wound, to kill, to burn, or to drown." The wounding,
killing, burning, drowning lasted two days, and very few escaped. The
landward pursuit extended for three or four leagues around, so that the
roads and pastures were covered with bodies, with corslets, and other
weapons. Count Louis himself stripped off his clothes, and made his
escape, when all was over, by swimming across the Ems. With the paltry
remnant of his troops he again took refuge in Germany.

The Spanish army, two days afterwards, marched back to Groningen. The
page which records their victorious campaign is foul with outrage and red
with blood. None of the horrors which accompany the passage of hostile
troops through a defenceless country were omitted. Maids and matrons were
ravished in multitudes; old men butchered in cold blood. As Alva
returned, with the rear-guard of his army, the whole sky was red with a
constant conflagration; the very earth seemed changed to ashes. Every
peasant's hovel, every farm-house, every village upon the road had been
burned to the ground. So gross and so extensive had been the outrage,
that the commander-in-chief felt it due to his dignity to hang