it to be carried into instant execution, without regard to age, sex, or condition.  This is probably the most concise death-warrant that was ever framed.  Three millions of people, men, women, and children, were sentenced to the scaffold in:  three lines; and, as it was well known that these were not harmless thunders, like some bulls of the Vatican, but serious and practical measures, which it was intended should be enforced, the horror which they produced may be easily imagined.  It was hardly the purpose of Government to compel the absolute completion of the wholesale plan in all its length and breadth, yet in the horrible times upon which they had fallen, the Netherlanders might be excused for believing that no measure was too monstrous to be fulfilled.  At any rate, it was certain that when all were condemned, any might at a moment’s warning be carried to the scaffold, and this was precisely the course adopted by the authorities.

Under this universal decree the industry of the Blood-Council might, now seem superfluous.  Why should not these mock prosecutions be dispensed with against individuals, now that a common sentence had swallowed the whole population in one vast grave?  Yet it may be supposed that if the exertions of the commissioners and councillors served no other purpose, they at least furnished the Government with valuable evidence as to the relative wealth and other circumstances of the individual victims.  The leading thought of the Government being that persecution, judiciously managed, might fructify into a golden harvest,—­it was still desirable to persevere in the cause in which already such bloody progress had been made.

And under this new decree, the executions certainly did not slacken.  Men in the highest and the humblest positions were daily and hourly dragged to the stake.  Alva, in a single letter to Philip, coolly estimated the number of executions which were to take place immediately after the expiration of holy week, “at eight hundred heads.”  Many a citizen, convicted of a hundred thousand florins and of no other crime, saw himself suddenly tied to a horse’s tail, with his hands fastened behind him, and so dragged to the gallows.  But although wealth was an unpardonable sin, poverty proved rarely a protection.  Reasons sufficient could always be found for dooming the starveling laborer as well as the opulent burgher.  To avoid the disturbances created in the streets by the frequent harangues or exhortations addressed to the bystanders by the victims on their way to the scaffold, a new gag was invented.  The tongue of each prisoner was screwed into an iron ring, and then seared with a hot iron.  The swelling and inflammation which were the immediate result, prevented the tongue from slipping through the ring, and of course effectually precluded all possibility of speech.

Although the minds of men were not yet prepared for concentrated revolt against the tyranny under which they were languishing, it was not possible to suppress all sentiments of humanity, and to tread out every spark of natural indignation.