A moment of shuddering silence succeeded the stroke.  The whole vast assembly seemed to have felt it in their own hearts.  Tears fell from the eyes even of the Spanish soldiery, for they knew and honored Egmont as a valiant general.  The French embassador, Mondoucet, looking upon the scene from a secret place, whispered that he had now seen the head fall before which France had twice trembled.  Tears were even seen upon the iron cheek of Alva, as, from a window in a house directly opposite the scaffold, he looked out upon the scene.

A dark cloth was now quickly thrown over the body and the blood, and, within a few minutes, the Admiral was seen advancing through the crowd.  His bald head was uncovered, his hands were unbound.  He calmly saluted such of his acquaintances as he chanced to recognize upon his path.  Under a black cloak, which he threw off when he had ascended the scaffold, he wore a plain, dark doublet, and he did not, like Egmont, wear the insignia of the Fleece.  Casting his eyes upon the corpse, which lay covered with the dark cloth, he asked if it were the body of Egmont.  Being answered in the affirmative, he muttered a few words in Spanish, which were not distinctly audible.  His attention was next caught by the sight of his own coat of arms reversed, and he expressed anger at this indignity to his escutcheon, protesting that he had not deserved the insult.  He then spoke a few words to the crowd below, wishing them happiness, and begging them to pray for his soul.  He did not kiss the crucifix, but he knelt upon the scaffold to pray, and was assisted in his devotions by the Bishop of Ypres.  When they were concluded, he rose again to his feet.  Then drawing a Milan cap completely over his face, and uttering, in Latin, the same invocation which Egmont had used, he submitted his neck to the stroke.

Egmont had obtained, as a last favor, that his execution should precede that of his friend.  Deeming himself in part to blame for Horn’s reappearance in Brussels after the arrival of Alva, and for his, death, which was the result, he wished to be spared the pang of seeing him dead.  Gemma Frisius, the astrologer who had cast the horoscope of Count Horn at his birth, had come to him in the most solemn manner to warn him against visiting Brussels.  The Count had answered stoutly that he placed his trust in God, and that, moreover, his friend Egmont was going thither also, who had engaged that no worse fate should befal the one of them than the other.

The heads of both sufferers were now exposed for two hours upon the iron stakes.  Their bodies, placed in coffins, remained during the same interval upon the scaffold.  Meantime, notwithstanding the presence of the troops, the populace could not be restrained from tears and from execrations.  Many crowded about the scaffold, and dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood, to be preserved afterwards as memorials of the crime and as ensigns of revenge.