he most absolute necessity could not be obtained. It was
impossible to buy bread, or meat, or beer. The tyrant, beside himself
with rage at being thus braved in his very lair, privately sent for
Master Carl, the executioner. In order to exhibit an unexpected and
salutary example, he had determined to hang eighteen of the leading
tradesmen of the city in the doors of their own shops, with the least
possible delay and without the slightest form of trial.

Master Carl was ordered, on the very night of his interview with the
Duke, to prepare eighteen strong cords, and eighteen ladders twelve feet
in length. By this simple arrangement, Alva was disposed to make manifest
on the morrow, to the burghers of Brussels, that justice was thenceforth
to be carried to every man's door. He supposed that the spectacle of a
dozen and a half of butchers and bakers suspended in front of the shops
which they had refused to open, would give a more effective stimulus to
trade than any to be expected from argument or proclamation. The hangman
was making ready his cords and ladders; Don Frederic of Toledo was
closeted with President Viglius, who, somewhat against his will, was
aroused at midnight to draw the warrants for these impromptu executions;
Alva was waiting with grim impatience for the dawn upon which the show
was to be exhibited, when an unforeseen event suddenly arrested the
homely tragedy. In the night arrived the intelligence that the town of
Brill had been captured. The Duke, feeling the full gravity of the
situation, postponed the chastisement which he had thus secretly planned
to a more convenient season, in order without an instant's hesitation to
avert the consequences of this new movement on the part of the rebels.
The seizure of Brill was the Deus ex machina which unexpectedly solved
both the inextricable knot of the situation and the hangman's noose.

Allusion has more than once been made to those formidable partisans of
the patriot cause, the marine outlaws. Cheated of half their birthright
by nature, and now driven forth from their narrow isthmus by tyranny, the
exiled Hollanders took to the ocean. Its boundless fields, long arable to
their industry, became fatally fruitful now that oppression was
transforming a peaceful seafaring people into a nation of corsairs.
Driven to outlawry and poverty, no doubt many Netherlanders plunged into
crime. The patriot party had long sine laid aside the respectful
deportment which had pr