brewers of Brussels on their own thresholds--from the beheading of the
twenty nobles on the Horse-market, in the opening of the Governor's
career, to the roasting alive of Uitenhoove at its close-from the block
on which fell the honored head of Antony Straalen, to the obscure chair
in which the ancient gentlewoman of Amsterdam suffered death for an act
of vicarious mercy--from one year's end to another's--from the most
signal to the most squalid scenes of sacrifice, the eye and hand of the
great master directed, without weariness, the task imposed by the
sovereign.

No doubt the work of almost indiscriminate massacre had been duly mapped
out. Not often in history has a governor arrived to administer the
affairs of a province, where the whole population, three millions strong,
had been formally sentenced to death. As time wore on, however, he even
surpassed the bloody instructions which he had received. He waved aside
the recommendations of the Blood Council to mercy; he dissuaded the
monarch from attempting the path of clemency, which, for secret reasons,
Philip was inclined at one period to attempt. The Governor had, as he
assured the King, been using gentleness in vain, and he was now
determined to try what a little wholesome severity could effect. These
words were written immediately after the massacres at Harlem.

With all the bloodshed at Mons, and Naarden, and Mechlin, and by the
Council of Tumults, daily, for six years long, still crying from the
ground, he taxed himself with a misplaced and foolish tenderness to the
people. He assured the King that when Alkmaar should be taken, he would,
not spare a "living soul among its whole population;" and, as his parting
advice, he recommended that every city in the Netherlands should be
burned to the ground, except a few which could be occupied permanently by
the royal troops. On the whole, so finished a picture of a perfect and
absolute tyranny has rarely been presented to mankind by history, as in
Alva's administration of the Netherlands.

The tens of thousands in those miserable provinces who fell victims to
the gallows, the sword, the stake, the living grave, or to living
banishment, have never been counted; for those statistics of barbarity
are often effaced from human record. Enough, however, is known, and
enough has been recited in the preceding pages. No mode in which human
beings have ever caused their fellow-creatures to suffer, was omitted
from daily practice