a natural death were exhumed, and their festering remains hanged upon the gibbet, on pretext that they had died without receiving the sacrament, but in reality that their property might become the legitimate prey of the treasury.  Marriages of long standing were dissolved by order of government, that rich heiresses might be married against their will to foreigners whom they abhorred.  Women and children were executed for the crime of assisting their fugitive husbands and parents with a penny in their utmost need, and even for consoling them with a letter, in their exile.  Such was the regular course of affairs as administered by the Blood Council.  The additional barbarities committed amid the sack and ruin of those blazing and starving cities, are almost beyond belief; unborn infants were torn from the living bodies of their mothers; women and children were violated by thousands; and whole populations burned and hacked to pieces by soldiers in every mode which cruelty, in its wanton ingenuity, could devise.  Such was the administration, of which Vargas affirmed, at its close, that too much mercy, “nimia misericordia,” had been its ruin.

Even Philip, inspired by secret views, became wearied of the Governor, who, at an early period, had already given offence by his arrogance.  To commemorate his victories, the Viceroy had erected a colossal statue, not to his monarch, but to himself.  To proclaim the royal pardon, he had seated himself upon a golden throne.  Such insolent airs could be ill forgiven by the absolute King.  Too cautious to provoke an open rupture, he allowed the Governor, after he had done all his work, and more than all his work, to retire without disgrace, but without a triumph.  For the sins of that administration, master and servant are in equal measure responsible.

The character of the Duke of Alva, so far as the Netherlands are concerned, seems almost like a caricature.  As a creation of fiction, it would seem grotesque:  yet even that hardy, historical scepticism, which delights in reversing the judgment of centuries, and in re-establishing reputations long since degraded to the dust, must find it difficult to alter this man’s position.  No historical decision is final; an appeal to a more remote posterity, founded upon more accurate evidence, is always valid; but when the verdict has been pronounced upon facts which are undisputed, and upon testimony from the criminal’s lips, there is little chance of a reversal of the sentence.  It is an affectation of philosophical candor to extenuate vices which are not only avowed, but claimed as virtues.