ed, at his first glance into the disorderly state of
the exchequer, that at least a short respite was desirable before
proceeding with the interminable measures of hostility against the
rebellion. If any man had been ever disposed to give Alva credit for
administrative ability, such delusion must have vanished at the spectacle
of confusion and bankruptcy which presented, itself at the termination of
his government. He resolutely declined to give his successor any
information whatever as to his financial position. So far from furnishing
a detailed statement, such as might naturally be expected upon so
momentous an occasion, he informed the Grand Commander that even a sketch
was entirely out of the question, and would require more time and labor
than he could then afford. He took his departure, accordingly, leaving
Requesens in profound ignorance as to his past accounts; an ignorance in
which it is probable that the Duke himself shared to the fullest extent.
His enemies stoutly maintained that, however loosely his accounts had
been kept, he had been very careful to make no mistakes against himself,
and that he had retired full of wealth, if not of honor, from his long
and terrible administration. His own letters, on the contrary, accused
the King of ingratitude, in permitting an old soldier to ruin himself,
not only in health but in fortune, for want of proper recompense during
an arduous administration. At any rate it is very certain that the
rebellion had already been an expensive matter to the Crown. The army in
the Netherlands numbered more than sixty-two thousand men, eight thousand
being Spaniards, the rest Walloons and Germans. Forty millions of dollars
had already been sunk, and it seemed probable that it would require
nearly the whole annual produce of the American mines to sustain the war.
The transatlantic gold and silver, disinterred from the depths where they
had been buried for ages, were employed, not to expand the current of a
healthy, life-giving commerce, but to be melted into blood. The sweat and
the tortures of the King's pagan subjects in the primeval forests of the
New World, were made subsidiary to the extermination of his Netherland
people, and the destruction of an ancient civilization. To this end had
Columbus discovered a hemisphere for Castile and Aragon, and the new
Indies revealed their hidden treasures?

Forty millions of ducats had been spent. Six and a half millions of
arrearages were due t