he Duke of Alva. The Duchess Margaret made
no secret of her indignation at being superseded when Alva produced his
commission appointing him captain-general, and begging the duchess to
co-operate with him in ordering all the cities of the Netherlands to
receive the garrisons which he would send them. In September, 1567, the
Duke of Alva established a new court for the trial of crimes committed
"during the recent period of troubles." It was called the "Council of
Troubles," but will be for ever known in history as the "Blood Council."
It superseded all other courts and institutions. So well did this new
and terrible engine perform its work that in less than three months
1,800 of the highest, the noblest, and the most virtuous men in the
land, including Count Egmont and Admiral Horn, suffered death. Further
than that, the whole country became a charnal-house; columns and stakes
in every street, the doorposts of private houses, the fences in the
fields were laden with human carcases, strangled, burned, beheaded.
Within a few months after the arrival of Alva the spirit of the nation
seemed hopelessly broken.

The Duchess of Parma, who had demanded her release from the odious
position of a cipher in a land where she had so lately been sovereign,
at last obtained it, and took her departure in December for Parma, thus
finally closing her eventful career in the Netherlands. The Duke of Alva
took up his position as governor-general, and amongst his first works
was the erection of the celebrated citadel of Antwerp, not to protect,
but to control the commercial capital of the provinces.

Events marched swiftly. On February 16, 1568, a sentence of the
Inquisition condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as
heretics. From this universal doom only a few persons, especially named,
were excepted; and a proclamation of the king, dated ten days later,
confirmed this decree of the Inquisition, and ordered it to be carried
into instant execution, without regard to age, sex, or condition. This
is probably the most concise death-warrant ever framed. Three millions
of people, men, women, and children, were sentenced to the scaffold in
three lines.

The Prince of Orange at last threw down the gauntlet, and published a
reply to the active condemnation which had been pronounced against him
in default of appearance before the Blood Council. It would, he said, be
both death and degradation to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the