CHAP. VII.] BATTLE OF HEYLIGERLEE. 247 When on the point of thus openly taking up arms against his sovereign, Orange, in reply to the sentence of condemnation which had been passed upon him, published in the summer of 1568 a paper or manifesto, which he called his "justification." 38 The chief purport of it was to repudiate the jurisdiction of the infamous Council of Blood; and it concluded with an eloquent burst of indignation against Philip, who had forgotten the Prince's services and those of his ancestors, and had robbed him of his honour and his son, both dearer to him than life, while at the same time the King had degraded himself by breaking all his royal oaths and obligations. William also announced in this paper his change of religion. Two of the attacks projected by Orange completely failed. Hoogstraaten's division was beaten by Davila about the end of April, and the remnant of it joined the reserve at Clèves; Cocqueville's force · of about 2500 men was cut to pieces at St. Valéri, July 18th, by Marshal de Cossé, governor of Picardy, scarce 300 men escaping. Louis of Nassau was more successful in Groningen against Count D'Aremberg and a body of Spanish veterans. Louis had taken up a strong position near Winschoten. His rear was covered by the convent of Heyligerlee and a thick wood; in front the ground sloped down to an extensive morass; his left was protected by a hill, and on his right he had planted his cavalry, under his brother Adolphus. D'Aremberg was loth to attack so strong a position, till, nettled by the taunts of the Spaniards, who accused him of treachery, he gave the order to advance. The Spaniards had soon occasion to repent their rashness. They had scarcely emerged from the morass, fatigued and in disorder, when Louis' cavalry charged them in flank and put them completely to the rout. D'Aremberg himself fell and 1600 of his men ; besides which the royalists lost nine guns, their military stores, and a considerable sum of money. On the other side, Count Adolphus was slain. Such was the BATTLE OF HEYLIGERLEE, fought May 23rd 1568. Count Meyer, however, succeeded on the following day in throwing himself into the town of Groningen and saving that place.39 The victory of Heyligerlee proved the death-warrant of Counts Egmont and Horn. Although those noblemen had been imprisoned nearly nine months, their trial was not yet finished, and Alva now determined to bring it to a close. In his correspondence with Philip, Alva observed that this disaster to the royal arms had thrown the people into a ferment; it was necessary therefore to show Motley, Dutch Rep. vol. ii. p. 180 sq. "Alva's correspondence respecting this invasion is in Gachard, t. iii. 248 INDICTMENT OF EGMONT AND HORN. [BOOK III. that he did not fear them, and to crush all hope that the prisoners could be liberated by a fresh insurrection; and he adverted to the error of Charles V., who, by retaining the Elector of Saxony and Landgrave of Hesse in custody instead of putting them to death, gave occasion to a new conspiracy, by which he was ignominiously driven from Germany, and almost deprived of the Imperial crown.40 As a prelude to the proceedings against Egmont and Horn, nineteen members of the Union, chiefly men of rank, and including both Catholics and Protestants, were condemned to death, and were executed, June 1st, in the great square before the Hôtel de Ville at Brussels. The Catholics were beheaded, the Protestants burnt. Other executions followed during the next two days. Egmont and Horn, who had been treated with great rigour in their dungeon at Ghent, and hardly allowed the necessaries of life, were now told that the time allowed for their defence had expired, and that no further evidence could be heard. Both prisoners being Knights of the Golden Fleece had claimed to be tried by the statutes of the order; while Egmont, as a Brabanter, further appealed to the protection of the Joyeuse Entrée, and Horn, as a count of the Holy Roman Empire, demanded to be judged by his peers, the electors and princes of Germany. But precedents and constitutional forms were of no account in the eyes either of Alva or of his master. Alva declared that he represented Philip not as head of the order but as sovereign of the land, and refused to receive any more petitions on the subject; while the King of Spain violated without scruple the oath which he had sworn to the Joyeuse Entrée. The wives of both prisoners made great exertions in their favour, but in vain, although Egmont's consort was sister to the Duke of Bavaria. Egmont's indictment consisted of ninety-nine articles, of which the principal were, plotting to expel the King of Spain from the Netherlands; conspiring against the life and character of Cardinal Granvella, demanding the removal of that minister and inventing the foolscap livery; requiring that the three Councils should be reduced to one; demanding the assembly of the States-General; declaring that the edicts were too rigorous, and that he would not assist in burning 40,000 or 50,000 men; making arrangements with the Prince of Orange and others for the levying of troops; permitting at his table the cry of Vivent les Gueux! and many other charges of a similar description."1 The accusations against Count Horn were of much the same kind. Casembrot, Lord of Beckerzel, Egmont's secretary, who had been condemned to death for signing the "Compromise," was tortured 40 Dispaccio di Cavalli, July 3rd 1568, ap. Ranke, Popes, vol. ii. p. 62. "See the Procès d'Egmont, ap. Motley, Dutch Rep. vol. ii. p. 177. CHAP. VII.] THEIR EXECUTION. 249 in the most barbarous manner to make him accuse his master; and when nothing to justify the Count's condemnation could be extorted from the secretary, Alva directed that he should be torn asunder by horses. On the 2nd of June the Council of Troubles pronounced Egmont and Horn guilty, and they were sentenced to death by that illegal and arbitrary tribunal. On the same day a body of 3000 soldiers was despatched to Ghent to escort the prisoners to Brussels, which city they entered on the 4th, and were conducted to the Brodhuys in the market-place. Alva sent for the Bishop of Ypres, and told him to prepare the two noblemen for the fate they were to suffer on the following day; and when the Bishop, who was a personal friend of Egmont's, fell at Alva's feet and implored him to grant a somewhat longer time for preparation, the Duke sternly rebuked him, telling him that he had not been summoned to obstruct the course of justice, but to discharge towards the prisoners the duties of his.holy office. At the news of his unexpected fate Egmont was at first struck with astonishment and dismay; but soon recovering himself, prepared, with the assistance of the good Bishop, to meet his death with calmness and resignation. He then addressed a letter to his wife, and another 42 to Philip in which he protested that he had done nothing against the King, and besought him to have pity on his wife and children. He was beheaded in the great square on the morning of the 5th of June, and met his death with constancy. Horn's execution followed on the same scaffold about noon. also died with fortitude, though he displayed more violence and indignation than Egmont at his unmerited fate. He was outshone by Egmont, who, though far from being a great man, was a showy personage, brave, sparkling, popular, but weak and vacillating. Horn, who was of more quiet, retiring manners, passed for morose; yet he also was but a commonplace character, and has been rendered conspicuous only by his tragic fate. He More than two years after, Horn's brother, the Baron Montigny, who, though a prisoner in Spain, had been tried and condemned by the Council of Blood at Brussels, was privily executed by order of Philip II. in the fortress of Simancas. He and the Marquis of Bergen had been despatched in 1566 to Madrid rather against their will, as both had shown an inclination to the popular cause -to lay before Philip the critical state of the Netherlands, and to demand an alteration of policy. They never returned. Bergen 12 Strada, t. i. p. 235. 250 LOUIS OF NASSAU DEFEATED. [Book III. appears to have died a natural death, hastened on by fear and anxiety: Montigny was executed by the garotte, Oct. 16th 1570. It was given out that he also had died from natural causes; but the true story has at length come out from Philip's own letters preserved in the archives of Simancas.43 Since his victory at Heyligerlee, Count Louis of Nassau had been forced to remain inactive, for want of funds to pay his troops; and Alva, after the execution of Egmont and Horn, resolved to march against him in person. Louis having thus opposed to him the most consummate general of the age, at the head of 15,000 veterans, while his own army, though superior in number, was composed of raw recruits, deemed it prudent to evacuate Groningen and East Friesland; and he took up a fortified position at Jemgum between Emden and Leer. It would have been difficult to select a worse position. He had shut himself up, as in a cul-de-sac, in a small peninsula, formed by the river Ems and the Gulf of Dollart, so that in case of a reverse retreat was impossible. Here he was attacked by Alva on the 20th and 21st July; his whole army was dispersed or killed, and he himself escaped with difficulty by stripping and swimming across the Ems. His men had basely fled, before the action began, and Louis was obliged to fire with his own hand the guns which defended the road leading to the position. After this victory, Alva marched against Orange, who had at length appeared on the banks of the Meuse and the Scheldt with so considerable a German force that Alva did not venture to attack him; but knowing that he had no money wherewith to pay his troops, resolved to wear him out by delay. The plan succeeded: the Prince's army could not be kept together, and he and his brother Louis retired into Germany, whence they afterwards proceeded, with about 1200 horse, to assist the Hugonots in France. They were present at the battles of La Charité, Roche la Ville, and Poitiers; but William returned to Nassau in September 1569, leaving his brother Louis in France. The campaign being thus concluded, Alva made his triumphant entry into Brussels; and he soon after gave a signal proof of his vanity and arrogance by causing a bronze statue of himself to be erected at Antwerp, which represented him trampling upon a monster bearing emblems typifying the Petition, the Compromise, and the ensuing insurrection. An inscription on the pedestal contained a long encomium on the Duke, who was described as having extinguished heresy and rebellion, and restored the Netherlands to 43 See Gachard, Corr. de Philippe II. t. ii. p. 158 sq. CHAP. VII.] 66 THE BEGGARS OF THE SEA." 251 peace and justice. Alva also caused several medals to be struck, equally offensive by their vanity and presumption. The next year or two was passed in comparative tranquillity, although Alva still continued his cruelties and oppressions. Having dried up by his impolitic government the usual sources of revenue, he naturally found himself in great want of money, and he was forced to have recourse to an assembly of the StatesGeneral, in order to obtain supplies; but he experienced nothing but unwillingness and opposition. His extortionate system of taxation, as it reached everybody, procured for the Spanish government more universal hatred even than the religious persecutions, and alienated Catholics as well as Protestants. Regardless of the essential difference between the two countries, Alva endeavoured to apply the Spanish system of finance to the Netherlands, and in March 1569 issued decrees for a tax of the one hundredth penny, or one per cent., on all property real and personal; of the twentieth penny, or five per cent., on every transfer of real estate; and of the tenth penny, or ten per cent., on every article sold. This last tax, which was similar to that called the Alcavala in Spain, naturally occasioned the utmost anger and consternation in a commercial country like the Netherlands. It seems to have been Alva's ill success as a financier that first led Philip to withdraw from him his confidence; and the increasing disorders in the Netherlands at length determined the Spanish King to supersede him. In the civil disorganisation produced by bad government had risen up, besides the Gueux Sauvages already mentioned, a host of formidable pirates called Gueux de la Mer, or Beggars of the Sea. These rovers, to whom the Prince of Orange had granted letters of marque, were accustomed, without any very scrupulous regard to international law, to seize all the prizes they could lay their hands on, which they sold in English ports. These practices had occasioned disputes between the Spanish government in the Netherlands and that of Queen Elizabeth; between which there already existed a bad feeling, occasioned by Elizabeth having temporarily laid an embargo on some vessels having money on board for the Flemish government; an act which Alva had retaliated (January 1569) by not only seizing all English property in the Netherlands, but also by arresting every Englishman he could lay hands on. Alva, however, advised Philip not openly to resent the injuries of Elizabeth till he had subdued his revolted subjects in the Netherlands, and for the next three or four years it was difficult to say whether Spain and England were at peace or war. Elizabeth |