such combats. Their prowess was equal to
their ferocity, and this was enough to make them seem endowed with
preterhuman powers. When it is remembered, also, that the burghers were
insufficiently armed, that many of their defenders turned against them,
that many thousands fled in the first moments of the encounter--and when
the effect of a sudden and awful panic is duly considered, the
discrepancy between the number of killed on the two sides will not seem
so astonishing.

A few officers of distinction were taken, alive and carried to the
castle. Among these were the Seigneur de Capres and young Count Egmont.
The councillor Jerome de Roda was lounging on a chair in an open gallery
when these two gentlemen were brought before him, and Capres was base
enough to make a low obeisance to the man who claimed to represent the
whole government of his Majesty. The worthy successor of Vargas replied
to his captive's greeting by a "kick in his stomach," adding, with a
brutality which his prototype might have envied, "Ah puto
tradidor,--whoreson traitor, let me have no salutations from such as
you." Young Egmont, who had been captured, fighting bravely at the head
of coward troops, by Julian Romero, who nine years before had stood on
his father's scaffold, regarded this brutal scene with haughty
indignation. This behaviour had more effect upon Roda than the suppleness
of Capres. "I am sorry for your misfortune, Count," said the councillor,
without however rising from his chair; "such is the lot of those who take
arms against their King." This was the unfortunate commencement of Philip
Egmont's career, which was destined to be inglorious, vacillating, base,
and on more than one occasion unlucky.

A shiver ran through the country as the news of the horrible crime was
spread, but it was a shiver of indignation, not of fear. Already the
negotiations at Ghent between the representatives of the Prince and of
Holland and Zealand with the deputies of the other provinces were in a
favorable train, and the effect of this event upon their counsels was
rather quickening than appalling. A letter from Jerome de Roda to the
King was intercepted, giving an account of the transaction. In that
document the senator gave the warmest praise to Sancho d'Avila, Julian
Romero, Alonzo de Vargas, Francis Verdugo, as well as to the German
colonels Fugger, Frondsberger, Polwiller, and others who had most exerted
themselves in the massacre. "I wish your Majes