sed at length to sleep during the mock trials
of the already doomed victims; and as often as he was roused
up by his colleagues, he used to cry out mechanically, "To the
gibbet! to the gibbet!" so familiar was his tongue with the sounds
of condemnation.

The despair of the people may be imagined from the fact that,
until the end of the year 1567, their only consolation was the
prospect of the king's arrival! He never dreamed of coming. Even
the delight of feasting in horrors like these could not conquer
his indolence. The good duchess of Parma--for so she was in
comparison with her successor--was not long left to oppose the
feeble barrier of her prayers between Alva and his victims. She
demanded her dismissal from the nominal dignity, which was now
but a title of disgrace. Philip granted it readily, accompanied
by a hypocritical letter, a present of thirty thousand crowns,
and the promise of an annual pension of twenty thousand more.
She left Brussels in the month of April, 1568, raised to a high
place in the esteem and gratitude of the people, less by any
actual claims from her own conduct than by its fortuitous contrast
with the infamy of her successor. She retired to Italy, and died
at Naples in the month of February, 1586.

Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, duke of Alva, was of a distinguished
family in Spain, and even boasted of his descent from one of the
Moorish monarchs who had reigned in the insignificant kingdom of
Toledo. When he assumed the chief command in the Netherlands, he
was sixty years of age; having grown old and obdurate in pride,
ferocity, and avarice. His deeds must stand instead of a more
detailed portrait, which, to be thoroughly striking, should be
traced with a pen dipped in blood. He was a fierce and clever
soldier, brought up in the school of Charles V., and trained
to his profession in the wars of that monarch in Germany, and
subsequently in that of Philip II. against France. In addition
to the horrors acted by the Council of Blood, Alva committed many
deeds of collateral but minor tyranny; among others, he issued
a decree forbidding, under severe penalties, any inhabitant of
the country to marry without his express permission. His furious
edicts against emigration were attempted to be enforced in vain.
Elizabeth of England opened all the ports of her kingdom to the
Flemish refugees, who carried with them those abundant stores of
manufacturing knowledge which she wisely knew to be the elemen