and protracted struggles, until the various assemblies of the patrimonial provinces, one after another, exhausted, frightened, and hoping that no serious effort would be made to collect the tax, consented, under certain restrictions, to its imposition.—­The principal conditions were a protest against the legality of the proceeding, and the provision that the consent of no province should be valid until that of all had been obtained.  Holland, too, was induced to give in its adhesion, although the city of Amsterdam long withheld its consent; but the city and province of Utrecht were inexorable.  They offered a handsome sum in commutation, increasing the sum first proposed from 70,000 to 200,000 florins, but they resolutely refused to be saddled with this permanent tax.  Their stout resistance was destined to cost them dear.  In the course of a few months Alva, finding them still resolute in their refusal, quartered the regiment of Lombardy upon them, and employed other coercive measures to bring them to reason.  The rude, insolent, unpaid and therefore insubordinate soldiery were billeted in every house in the city, so that the insults which the population were made to suffer by the intrusion of these ruffians at their firesides would soon, it was thought, compel the assent of the province to the tax.  It was not so, however.  The city and the province remained stanch in their opposition.  Accordingly, at the close of the year (15th.  December, 1569) the estates were summoned to appear within fourteen days before the Blood Council.  At the appointed time the procureur-general was ready with an act of accusation, accompanied, as was usually the case, with a simultaneous sentence of condemnation.  The indictment revived and recapitulated all previous offences committed in the city and the province, particularly during the troubles of 1566, and at the epoch of the treaty with Duchess Margaret.  The inhabitants and the magistrates, both in their individual and public capacities, were condemned for heresy, rebellion, and misprision.  The city and province were accordingly pronounced guilty of high treason, were deprived of all their charters, laws, privileges, freedoms, and customs, and were declared to have forfeited all their property, real and personal, together with all tolls, rents, excises, and imposts, the whole being confiscated to the benefit of his Majesty.

The immediate execution of the sentence was, however, suspended, to allow the estates opportunity to reply.  An enormous mass of pleadings, replies, replications, rejoinders, and apostilles was the result, which few eyes were destined to read, and least of all those to whom they were nominally addressed.  They were of benefit to none save in the shape of fees which they engendered to the gentlemen of the robe.  It was six months, however, before the case was closed.  As there was no blood to be shed, a summary process was not considered necessary.  At last, on the 14th July, the voluminous pile of documents was placed