So much for the famous treason of Counts Egmont and Horn, so far as regards the history of the proceedings and the merits of the case.  The last act of the tragedy was precipitated by occurrences which must be now narrated.

The Prince of Orange had at last thrown down the gauntlet.  Proscribed, outlawed, with his Netherland property confiscated, and his eldest child kidnapped, he saw sufficient personal justification for at last stepping into the lists, the avowed champion of a nation’s wrongs.  Whether the revolution was to be successful, or to be disastrously crushed; whether its result would be to place him upon a throne or a scaffold, not even he, the deep-revolving and taciturn politician, could possibly foresee.  The Reformation, in which he took both a political and a religious interest, might prove a sufficient lever in his hands for the overthrow of Spanish power in the Netherlands.  The inquisition might roll back upon his country and himself, crushing them forever.  The chances seemed with the inquisition.  The Spaniards, under the first chieftain in Europe, were encamped and entrenched in the provinces.  The Huguenots had just made their fatal peace in France, to the prophetic dissatisfaction of Coligny.  The leading men of liberal sentiments in the Netherlands were captive or in exile.  All were embarrassed by the confiscations which, in anticipation of sentence, had severed the nerves of war.  The country was terror-stricken; paralyzed, motionless, abject, forswearing its convictions, and imploring only life.  At this moment William of Orange reappeared upon the scene.

He replied to the act of condemnation, which had been pronounced against him in default, by a published paper, of moderate length and great eloquence.  He had repeatedly offered to place himself, he said, upon trial before a competent court.  As a Knight of the Fleece, as a member of the Holy Roman Empire, as a sovereign prince, he could acknowledge no tribunal save the chapters of the knights or of the realm.  The Emperor’s personal intercession with Philip had been employed in vain, to obtain the adjudication of his case by either.  It would be both death and degradation on his part to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the infamous Council of Blood.  He scorned, he said, to plead his cause “before he knew not what base knaves, not fit to be the valets of his companions and himself.”

He appealed therefore to the judgment of the world.  He published not an elaborate argument, but a condensed and scathing statement of the outrages which had been practised upon him.  He denied that he had been a party to the Compromise.  He denied that he had been concerned in the Request, although he denounced with scorn the tyranny which could treat a petition to government as an act of open war against the sovereign.  He spoke of Granvelle with unmeasured wrath.  He maintained that his own continuance in office had been desired by the cardinal, in order that his personal