ent established. Anxiety concerning this rebellion
is supposed to have hastened the Grand Commander's death. A violent fever
seized him on the 1st, and terminated his existence on the 5th of March,
in the fifty-first year of his life.

It is not necessary to review elaborately his career, the chief incidents
of which have been sufficiently described. Requesens was a man of high
position by birth and office, but a thoroughly commonplace personage. His
talents either for war or for civil employments were not above
mediocrity. His friends disputed whether he were greater in the field or
in the council, but it is certain that he was great in neither. His
bigotry was equal to that of Alva, but it was impossible to rival the
Duke in cruelty. Moreover, the condition of the country, after seven
years of torture under his predecessor, made it difficult for him, at the
time of his arrival, to imitate the severity which had made the name of
Alva infamous. The Blood Council had been retained throughout his
administration, but its occupation was gone, for want of food for its
ferocity. The obedient provinces had been purged of Protestants; while
crippled, too, by confiscation, they offered no field for further
extortion. From Holland and Zealand, whence Catholicism had been nearly
excluded, the King of Spain was nearly excluded also. The Blood Council
which, if set up in that country, would have executed every living
creature of its population, could only gaze from a distance at those who
would have been its victims. Requesens had been previously distinguished
in two fields of action: the Granada massacres and the carnage of
Lepanto. Upon both occasions he had been the military tutor of Don John
of Austria, by whom he was soon to be succeeded in the government of the
Netherlands. To the imperial bastard had been assigned the pre-eminence,
but it was thought that the Grand Commander had been entitled to a more
than equal share of the glory.

We have seen how much additional reputation was acquired by Requesens in
the provinces. The expedition against Duiveland and Schouwen, was, on the
whole, the most brilliant feat of arms during the war, and its success
reflects an undying lustre on the hardihood and discipline of the
Spanish, German, and Walloon soldiery. As an act of individual audacity
in a bad cause, it has rarely been equalled. It can hardly be said,
however, that the Grand Commander was entitled to any large measure of
prais