Groningen at the head of eight or nine thousand undisciplined troops he was attacked, May 23, in a strong position behind a morass by a Spanish force under the Count of Aremberg, Stadholder of Friesland, at Heiligerlee.  He gained a complete victory.  Aremberg himself was slain, as was also the younger brother of Lewis, Adolphus of Nassau.  The triumph of the invaders was of short duration.  Alva himself took in hand the task of dealing with the rebels.  At the head of 15,000 troops he drove before him the levies of Nassau to Jemmingen on the estuary of the Ems, and here with the loss of only seven men he completely annihilated them.  Lewis himself and a few others alone escaped by throwing themselves into the water and swimming for their lives.

The action at Heiligerlee, by compelling the governor-general to take the field, had hastened the fate of Egmont and Hoorn.  After their arrest the two noblemen were kept in solitary confinement in the citadel of Ghent for several months, while the long list of charges against them was being examined by the Council of Troubles—­in other words by Vargas and del Rio.  These charges they angrily denied; and great efforts were made on their behalf by the wife of Egmont and the dowager Countess of Hoorn.  Appeals were made to the governor-general and to Philip himself, either for pardon on the ground of services rendered to the State, or at least for a trial, as Knights of the Golden Fleece, before the Court of the Order.  The Emperor Maximilian himself pleaded with Philip for clemency, but without avail.  Their doom had been settled in advance, and the king was inflexible.  Alva accordingly determined that they should be executed before he left Brussels for his campaign in the north.  On June 2, the council, after refusing to hear any further evidence in the prisoners’ favour, pronounced them guilty of high treason; and Alva at once signed the sentences of death.  Egmont and Hoorn the next day were brought by a strong detachment of troops from Ghent to Brussels and were confined in a building opposite the town hall, known as the Broodhuis.  On June 5, their heads were struck off upon a scaffold erected in the great square before their place of confinement.  Both of them met their death with the utmost calmness and courage.  The effect of this momentous stroke of vengeance upon these two patriot leaders, both of them good Catholics, who had always professed loyalty to their sovereign, and one of whom, Egmont, had performed distinguished services for his country and king, was profound.  A wave of mingled rage and sorrow swept over the land.  It was not only an act of cruel injustice, but even as an act of policy a blunder of the first magnitude, which was sure to bring, as it did bring, retribution in its train.

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CHAPTER IV

THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS