There is no more piteous tragedy in history than the story of the decline and ruin of this superbly prosperous, literary and artistic country, and yet out of the ashes came new courage.  Burned, broken, the Belgians and the Dutch were not beaten.  Pushed at last into Holland, where they united their fortunes with the Dutch, they cut the dykes of Holland, and let in the ocean, and clinging to the dykes with their finger tips, fought their way back to the land; but no sooner had the last of the Spaniards gone than out of their rags and poverty they founded a university as a monument to the providence of God in delivering them out of the hands of their enemies.  For, the Sixteenth Century, in the form of a brave knight, wears little Belgium and Holland like a red rose upon his heart.

THE DEATH OF EGMONT

But some of you will say that the Belgian people must have been rebels and guilty of some excess, and that had they remained quiescent, and not fomented treason, that no such fate could have overtaken them at the hands of Spain.  Very well.  I will take a youth who, at the beginning, believed in Charles the Fifth, a man who was as true to his ideals as the needle to the pole.  One day the “Bloody Council” decreed the death of Egmont and Horn.  Immediately afterward, the Duke of Alva sent an invitation to Egmont to be the guest of honor at a banquet in his own house.  A servant from the palace that night delivered to the Count a slip of paper, containing a warning to take the fleetest horse and flee the city, and from that moment not to eat or sleep without pistols at his hand.  To all this Egmont responded that no monster ever lived who could, with an invitation of hospitality, trick a patriot.  Like a brave man, the Count went to the Duke’s palace.  He found the guests assembled, but when he had handed his hat and cloak to the servant, Alva gave a sign, and from behind the curtains came Spanish musqueteers, who demanded his sword.  For instead of a banquet hall, the Count was taken to a cellar, fitted up as a dungeon.  Already Egmont had all but died for his country.  He had used his ships, his trade, his gold, for righting the people’s wrongs.  He was a man of a large family—­a wife and eleven children—­and people loved him as to idolatry.  But Alva was inexorable.  He had made up his mind that the merchants and burghers had still much hidden gold, and if he killed their bravest and best, terror would fall upon all alike, and that the gold he needed would be forthcoming.  That all the people might witness the scene, he took his prisoners to Brussels and decided to behead them in the public square.  In the evening Egmont received the notice that his head would be chopped off the next day.  A scaffold was erected in the public square.  That evening he wrote a letter that is a marvel of restraint.