unlooked-for
turn in affairs decided the king to remove Alva, whose barbarous
and rapacious conduct was now objected to even by Philip, when
it produced results disastrous to his cause. Don Luis Zanega y
Requesens, commander of the order of Malta, was named to the
government of the Netherlands. He arrived at Brussels on the
17th of November, 1573; and on the 18th of that following month,
the monster whom he succeeded set out for Spain, loaded with the
booty to which he had waded through oceans of blood, and with
the curses of the country, which, however, owed its subsequent
freedom to the impulse given by his intolerable cruelty. He repaired
to Spain; and after various fluctuations of favor and disgrace
at the hands of his congenial master, he died in his bed, at
Lisbon, in 1582, at the advanced age of seventy-four years.

CHAPTER X

TO THE PACIFICATION OF GHENT

A.D. 1573--1576

The character of Requesens was not more opposed to that of his
predecessor, than were the instructions given to him for his
government. He was an honest, well-meaning, and moderate man,
and the king of Spain hoped that by his influence and a total
change of measures he might succeed in recalling the Netherlands
to obedience. But, happily for the country, this change was adopted
too late for success; and the weakness of the new government
completed the glorious results which the ferocity of the former
had prepared.

Requesens performed all that depended on him, to gain the confidence
of the people. He caused Alva's statue to be removed; and hoped
to efface the memory of the tyrant by dissolving the Council of
Blood and abandoning the obnoxious taxes which their inventor
had suspended rather than abolished. A general amnesty was also
promulgated against the revolted provinces; they received it
with contempt and defiance. Nothing then was left to Requesens
but to renew the war; and this he found to be a matter of no
easy execution. The finances were in a state of the greatest
confusion; and the Spanish troops were in many places seditious,
in some openly mutinous, Alva having left large arrears of pay
due to almost all, notwithstanding the immense amount of his
pillage and extortion. Middleburg, which had long sustained a
siege against all the efforts of the patriots, was now nearly
reduced by famine, notwithstanding the gallant efforts of its
governor, Mondragon. Requesens turned his immediate attention
to the relief of this impor