Such were the instructions of Philip to Eboli, and precisely in accordance with the program, was the horrible comedy enacted at the death-bed of the envoy.  Three days after his parting interview with his disinterested friend, the Marquis was a corpse.—­Before his limbs were cold, a messenger was on his way to Brussels, instructing the Regent to sequestrate his property, and to arrest, upon suspicion of heresy, the youthful kinsman and niece, who, by the will of the Marquis, were to be united in marriage and to share his estate.  The whole drama, beginning with the death scene, was enacted according to order:  Before the arrival of Alva in the Netherlands, the property of the Marquis was in the hands of the Government, awaiting the confiscation,—­which was but for a brief season delayed, while on the other hand, Baron Montigny, Bergen’s companion in doom, who was not, however, so easily to be carried off by homesickness, was closely confined in the alcazar of Segovia, never to leave a Spanish prison alive.  There is something pathetic in the delusion in which Montigny and his brother, the Count Horn, both indulged, each believing that the other was out of harm’s way, the one by his absence from the Netherlands, the other by his absence from Spain, while both, involved in the same meshes, were rapidly and surely approaching their fate.

In the same despatch of the 9th September, in which the Duke communicated to Philip the capture of Egmont and Horn, he announced to him his determination to establish a new court for the trial of crimes committed during the recent period of troubles.  This wonderful tribunal was accordingly created with the least possible delay.  It was called the Council of Troubles, but it soon acquired the terrible name, by which it will be forever known in history, of the ‘Blood-Council’.  It superseded all other institutions.  Every court, from those of the municipal magistracies up to the supreme councils of the provinces, were forbidden to take cognizance in future of any cause growing out of the late troubles.  The council of state, although it was not formally disbanded, fell into complete desuetude, its members being occasionally summoned into Alva’s private chambers in an irregular manner, while its principal functions were usurped by the Blood-Council.  Not only citizens of every province, but the municipal bodies and even the sovereign provincial estates themselves, were compelled to plead, like humble individuals, before this new and extraordinary tribunal.  It is unnecessary to allude to the absolute violation which was thus committed of all charters, laws and privileges, because the very creation of the council was a bold and brutal proclamation that those laws and privileges were at an end.  The constitution or maternal principle of this suddenly erected court was of a twofold nature.  It defined and it punished the crime of treason.  The definitions, couched in eighteen articles, declared it to be treason