th and last under the
idolized champion of the Netherlands, and this so decisively that,
without losing a man, he had destroyed eight thousand rebels, and
scattered to the four winds the remaining twenty thousand. Such signal
results might well make even a meeker nature proud. Such vast and
fortunate efforts to fix for ever an impregnable military tyranny upon a
constitutional country, might cause a more modest despot to exult. It was
not wonderful that the haughty, and now apparently omnipotent Alva,
should almost assume the god. On his return to Brussels he instituted a
succession of triumphant festivals. The people were called upon to
rejoice and to be exceeding glad, to strew flowers in his path, to sing
Hosannas in his praise who came to them covered with the blood of those
who had striven in their defence. The holiday was duly called forth;
houses, where funeral hatchments for murdered inmates had been
perpetually suspended, were decked with garlands; the bells, which had
hardly once omitted their daily knell for the victims of an incredible
cruelty, now rang their merriest peals; and in the very square where so
lately Egmont and Horn, besides many other less distinguished martyrs,
had suffered an ignominious death, a gay tournament was held, day after
day, with all the insolent pomp which could make the exhibition most
galling.

But even these demonstrations of hilarity were not sufficient. The
conqueror and tamer of the Netherlands felt that a more personal and
palpable deification was necessary for his pride. When Germanicus had
achieved his last triumph over the ancient freedom of those generous
races whose descendants, but lately in possession of a better organized
liberty, Alva had been sent by the second and the worse Tiberius to
insult and to crush, the valiant but modest Roman erected his trophy upon
the plains of Idistavisus. "The army of Tiberius Caesar having subdued
the nations between the Rhine and the Elbe, dedicate this monument to
Mars, to Jupiter, and to Augustus." So ran the inscription of Germanicus,
without a word of allusion to his own name. The Duke of Alva, on his
return from the battle-fields of Brabant and Friesland, reared a colossal
statue of himself, and upon its pedestal caused these lines to be
engraved: "To Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, Governor of the
Netherlands under Philip the Second, for having extinguished sedition,
chastised rebellion, restored religion, secured