Unfortunately, in the bewilderment and misery of this people, the first development of a forcible and organized resistance was of a depraved and malignant character.  Extensive bands of marauders and highway robbers sprang into existence, who called themselves the Wild Beggars, and who, wearing the mask and the symbols of a revolutionary faction, committed great excesses in many parts of the country, robbing, plundering, and murdering.  Their principal wrath was exercised against religious houses and persons.  Many monasteries were robbed, many clerical persons maimed and maltreated.  It became a habit to deprive priests of their noses or ears, and to tie them to the tails of horses.  This was the work of ruffian gangs, whose very existence was engendered out of the social and moral putrescence to which the country was reduced, and who were willing to profit by the deep and universal hatred which was felt against Catholics and monks.  An edict thundered forth by Alva, authorizing and commanding all persons to slay the wild beggars at sight, without trial or hangman, was of comparatively slight avail.  An armed force of veterans actively scouring the country was more successful, and the freebooters were, for a time, suppressed.

Meantime the Counts Egmont and Horn had been kept in rigorous confinement at Ghent.  Not a warrant had been read or drawn up for their arrest.  Not a single preliminary investigation, not the shadow of an information had preceded the long imprisonment of two men so elevated in rank, so distinguished in the public service.  After the expiration of two months, however, the Duke condescended to commence a mock process against them.  The councillors appointed to this work were Vargas and Del Rio, assisted by Secretary Praets.  These persons visited the Admiral on the 10th, 11th, 12th and 17th of November, and Count Egmont on the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 16th, of the same month; requiring them to respond to a long, confused, and rambling collection of interrogatories.  They were obliged to render these replies in prison, unassisted by any advocates, on penalty of being condemned ‘in contumaciam’.  The questions, awkwardly drawn up as they seemed, were yet tortuously and cunningly arranged with a view of entrapping the prisoners into self-contradiction.  After this work had been completed, all the papers by which they intended to justify their answers were taken away from them.  Previously, too, their houses and those of their secretaries, Bakkerzeel and Alonzo de la Loo, had been thoroughly ransacked, and every letter and document which could be found placed in the hands of government.  Bakkerzeel, moreover, as already stated, had been repeatedly placed upon the rack, for the purpose of extorting confessions which might implicate his master.  These preliminaries and precautionary steps having been taken, the Counts had again been left to their solitude for two months longer.  On the 10th January, each was furnished with a copy of the declarations or accusations filed against him by the procurator-general.  To these documents, drawn up respectively in sixty-three, and in ninety articles, they were required, within five days’ time, without the assistance of an advocate, and without consultation with any human being, to deliver a written answer, on pain, as before, of being proceeded against and condemned by default.