e should believe that their palms had
been oiled," and forbade any farther words on the subject. When Longehaye
still ventured to speak in favor of certain persons "who were very poor
and simple, not charged with duplicity, and good Catholics besides," he
fared no better. "Away with you!" cried Noircarmes in a great fury,
adding that he had already written to have execution done upon the whole
of them. "Whereupon," said poor blood-councillor Longehaye, in his letter
to his colleagues, "I retired, I leave you to guess how."

Thus the work went on day after day, month after month. Till the 27th
August of the following year (1573) the executioner never rested, and
when Requesens, successor to Alva, caused the prisons of Mons to be
opened, there were found still seventy-five individuals condemned to the
block, and awaiting their fate.

It is the most dreadful commentary upon the times in which these
transactions occurred, that they could sink so soon into oblivion. The
culprits took care to hide the records of their guilt, while succeeding
horrors, on a more extensive scale, at other places, effaced the memory
of all these comparatively obscure murders and spoliations. The
prosperity of Mons, one of the most flourishing and wealthy manufacturing
towns in the Netherlands, was annihilated, but there were so many cities
in the same condition that its misery was hardly remarkable.
Nevertheless, in our own days, the fall of a mouldering tower in the
ruined Chateau de Naast at last revealed the archives of all these
crimes. How the documents came to be placed there remains a mystery, but
they have at last been brought to light.

The Spaniards had thus recovered Mons, by which event the temporary
revolution throughout the whole Southern Netherlands was at an end. The
keys of that city unlocked the gates of every other in Brabant and
Flanders. The towns which had so lately embraced the authority of Orange
now hastened to disavow the Prince, and to return to their ancient,
hypocritical, and cowardly allegiance. The new oaths of fidelity were in
general accepted by Alva, but the beautiful archiepiscopal city of
Mechlin was selected for an example and a sacrifice.

There were heavy arrears due to the Spanish troops. To indemnify them,
and to make good his blasphemous prophecy of Divine chastisement for its
past misdeeds, Alva now abandoned this town to the licence of his
soldiery. By his command Don Frederic advanced to the gates a