ts
of national wealth.

Alva soon summoned the Prince of Orange, his brothers, and all
the confederate lords, to appear before the council and answer
to the charge of high treason. The prince gave a prompt and
contemptuous answer, denying the authority of Alva and his council,
and acknowledging for his judges only the emperor, whose vassal
he was, or the king of Spain in person, as president of the order
of the Golden Fleece. The other lords made replies nearly similar.
The trials of each were, therefore, proceeded on, by contumacy;
confiscation of property being an object almost as dear to the
tyrant viceroy as the death of his victims. Judgments were promptly
pronounced against those present or absent, alive or dead. Witness
the case of the unfortunate marquess of Bergues, who had previously
expired at Madrid, as was universally believed, by poison; and his
equally ill-fated colleague in the embassy, the Baron Montigny,
was for a while imprisoned at Segovia, where he was soon after
secretly beheaded, on the base pretext of former disaffection.

The departure of the duchess of Parma having left Alva undisputed
as well as unlimited authority, he proceeded rapidly in his terrible
career. The count of Beuren was seized at Louvain, and sent prisoner
to Madrid; and wherever it was possible to lay hands on a suspected
patriot, the occasion was not neglected. It would be a revolting
task to enter into a minute detail of all the horrors committed,
and impossible to record the names of the victims who so quickly
fell before Alva's insatiate cruelty. The people were driven to
frenzy. Bands of wretches fled to the woods and marshes; whence,
half famished and perishing for want, they revenged themselves with
pillage and murder. Pirates infested and ravaged the coast; and
thus, from both sea and land, the whole extent of the Netherlands
was devoted to carnage and ruin. The chronicles of Brabant and
Holland, chiefly written in Flemish by contemporary authors,
abound in thrilling details of the horrors of this general
desolation, with long lists of those who perished. Suffice it
to say, that, on the recorded boast of Alva himself, he caused
eighteen thousand inhabitants of the Low Countries to perish by
the hands of the executioner, during his less than six years'
sovereignty in the Netherlands.

The most important of these tragical scenes was now soon to be
acted. The Counts Egmont and Horn, having submitted to some previous
i