val, and
bestowed themselves in safety for a season. A prize of about five hundred
prisoners was all which rewarded the sagacity of the enterprise. It is
needless to add that they were all immediately executed. It is a
wearisome and odious task to ransack the mouldy records of three
centuries ago, in order to reproduce the obscure names of the thousands
who were thus sacrificed.. The dead have buried their dead, and are
forgotten. It is likewise hardly necessary to state that the proceedings
before the council were all 'ex parte', and that an information was
almost inevitably followed by a death-warrant. It sometimes happened even
that the zeal of the councillors outstripped the industry of the
commissioners. The sentences were occasionally in advance of the docket.
Thus upon one occasion a man's case was called for trial, but before the
investigation was commenced it was discovered that he had been already
executed. A cursory examination of the papers proved, moreover, as usual,
that the culprit had committed no crime. "No matter for that," said
Vargas, jocosely, "if he has died innocent, it will be all the better for
him when he takes his trial in the other world."

But, however the councillors might indulge in these gentle jests among
themselves, it was obvious that innocence was in reality impossible,
according to the rules which had been laid down regarding treason. The
practice was in accordance with the precept, and persons were daily
executed with senseless pretexts, which was worse than executions with no
pretexts at all. Thus Peter de Witt of Amsterdam was beheaded, because at
one of the tumults in that city he had persuaded a rioter not to fire
upon a magistrate. This was taken as sufficient proof that he was a man
in authority among the rebels, and he was accordingly put to death.
Madame Juriaen, who, in 1566, had struck with her slipper a little wooden
image of the Virgin, together with her maid-servant, who had witnessed
without denouncing the crime, were both drowned by the hangman in a
hogshead placed on the scaffold.

Death, even, did not in all cases place a criminal beyond the reach of
the executioner. Egbert Meynartzoon, a man of high official rank, had
been condemned, together with two colleagues, on an accusation of
collecting money in a Lutheran church. He died in prison of dropsy. The
sheriff was indignant with the physician, because, in spite of cordials
and strengthening prescriptions, the cul