As an administrator of the civil and judicial affairs of the country, Alva at once reduced its institutions to a frightful simplicity.  In the place of the ancient laws of which the Netherlanders were so proud, he substituted the Blood Council.  This tribunal was even more arbitrary than the Inquisition.  Never was a simpler apparatus for tyranny devised, than this great labor-saving machine.  Never was so great a, quantity of murder and robbery achieved with such despatch and regularity.  Sentences, executions, and confiscations, to an incredible extent, were turned out daily with appalling precision.  For this invention, Alva is alone responsible.  The tribunal and its councillors were the work and the creatures of his hand, and faithfully did they accomplish the dark purpose of their existence.  Nor can it be urged, in extenuation of the Governor’s crimes, that he was but the blind and fanatically loyal slave of his sovereign.  A noble nature could not have contaminated itself with such slaughter-house work, but might have sought to mitigate the royal policy, without forswearing allegiance.  A nature less rigid than iron, would at least have manifested compunction, as it found itself converted into a fleshless instrument of massacre.  More decided than his master, however, he seemed, by his promptness, to rebuke the dilatory genius of Philip.  The King seemed, at times, to loiter over his work, teasing and tantalising his appetite for vengeance, before it should be gratified:  Alva, rapid and brutal, scorned such epicureanism.  He strode with gigantic steps over haughty statutes and popular constitutions; crushing alike the magnates who claimed a bench of monarchs for their jury, and the ignoble artisans who could appeal only to the laws of their land.  From the pompous and theatrical scaffolds of Egmont and Horn, to the nineteen halters prepared by Master Karl, to hang up the chief bakers and brewers of Brussels on their own thresholds—­from the beheading of the twenty nobles on the Horse-market, in the opening of the Governor’s career, to the roasting alive of Uitenhoove at its close-from the block on which fell the honored head of Antony Straalen, to the obscure chair in which the ancient gentlewoman of Amsterdam suffered death for an act of vicarious mercy—­from one year’s end to another’s—­from the most signal to the most squalid scenes of sacrifice, the eye and hand of the great master directed, without weariness, the task imposed by the sovereign.

No doubt the work of almost indiscriminate massacre had been duly mapped out.  Not often in history has a governor arrived to administer the affairs of a province, where the whole population, three millions strong, had been formally sentenced to death.  As time wore on, however, he even surpassed the bloody instructions which he had received.  He waved aside the recommendations of the Blood Council to mercy; he dissuaded the monarch from attempting the path of clemency, which, for secret reasons, Philip was inclined at one period to attempt.  The Governor had, as he assured the King, been using gentleness in vain, and he was now determined to try what a little wholesome severity could effect.  These words were written immediately after the massacres at Harlem.