Master Carl was ordered, on the very night of his interview with the Duke, to prepare eighteen strong cords, and eighteen ladders twelve feet in length.  By this simple arrangement, Alva was disposed to make manifest on the morrow, to the burghers of Brussels, that justice was thenceforth to be carried to every man’s door.  He supposed that the spectacle of a dozen and a half of butchers and bakers suspended in front of the shops which they had refused to open, would give a more effective stimulus to trade than any to be expected from argument or proclamation.  The hangman was making ready his cords and ladders; Don Frederic of Toledo was closeted with President Viglius, who, somewhat against his will, was aroused at midnight to draw the warrants for these impromptu executions; Alva was waiting with grim impatience for the dawn upon which the show was to be exhibited, when an unforeseen event suddenly arrested the homely tragedy.  In the night arrived the intelligence that the town of Brill had been captured.  The Duke, feeling the full gravity of the situation, postponed the chastisement which he had thus secretly planned to a more convenient season, in order without an instant’s hesitation to avert the consequences of this new movement on the part of the rebels.  The seizure of Brill was the Deus ex machina which unexpectedly solved both the inextricable knot of the situation and the hangman’s noose.

Allusion has more than once been made to those formidable partisans of the patriot cause, the marine outlaws.  Cheated of half their birthright by nature, and now driven forth from their narrow isthmus by tyranny, the exiled Hollanders took to the ocean.  Its boundless fields, long arable to their industry, became fatally fruitful now that oppression was transforming a peaceful seafaring people into a nation of corsairs.  Driven to outlawry and poverty, no doubt many Netherlanders plunged into crime.  The patriot party had long sine laid aside the respectful deportment which had provoked the sarcasms of the loyalists.  The beggars of the sea asked their alms through the mouths of their cannon.  Unfortunately, they but too often made their demands upon both friend and foe.  Every ruined merchant, every banished lord, every reckless mariner, who was willing to lay the commercial world under contribution to repair his damaged fortunes, could, without much difficulty, be supplied with a vessel and crew at some northern port, under color of cruising against the Viceroy’s government.  Nor was the ostensible motive simply a pretext.  To make war upon Alva was the leading object of all these freebooters, and they were usually furnished by the Prince of Orange, in his capacity of sovereign, with letters of marque for that purpose.  The Prince, indeed, did his utmost to control and direct an evil which had inevitably grown out of the horrors of the time.  His Admiral, William de la Marck, was however, incapable of comprehending the lofty