Two thousand workmen were employed daily in the construction of this important fortress, which was erected, as its position most plainly manifested, not to protect, but to control the commercial capital of the provinces.  It stood at the edge of the city, only separated from its walls by an open esplanade.  It was the most perfect pentagon in Europe, having one of its sides resting on the Scheld, two turned towards the city, and two towards the open country.  Five bastions, with walls of hammered stone, connected by curtains of turf and masonry, surrounded by walls measuring a league in circumference, and by an outer moat fed by the Scheld, enclosed a spacious enceinte, where a little church with many small lodging-houses, shaded by trees and shrubbery, nestled among the bristling artillery, as if to mimic the appearance of a peaceful and pastoral village.  To four of the five bastions, the Captain-General, with characteristic ostentation, gave his own names and titles.  One was called the Duke, the second Ferdinando, a third Toledo, a fourth Alva, while the fifth was baptized with the name of the ill-fated engineer, Pacheco.  The Watergate was decorated with the escutcheon of Alva, surrounded by his Golden Fleece collar, with its pendant lamb of God; a symbol of blasphemous irony, which still remains upon the fortress, to recal the image of the tyrant and murderer.  Each bastion was honeycombed with casemates and subterranean storehouses, and capable of containing within its bowels a vast supply of provisions, munitions, and soldiers.  Such was the celebrated citadel built to tame the turbulent spirit of Antwerp, at the cost of those whom it was to terrify and to insult.

     Etext editor’s bookmarks: 

     Conde and Coligny
     Furnished, in addition, with a force of two thousand prostitutes
     He came as a conqueror not as a mediator
     Hope deferred, suddenly changing to despair
     Meantime the second civil war in France had broken out
     Spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood
     The greatest crime, however, was to be rich
     Time and myself are two

MOTLEY’S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, PG EDITION, VOLUME 15.

THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC

By John Lothrop Motley 1855 1568 [chapter ii.]

Orange, Count Louis, Hoogstraaten, and others, cited before the Blood-Council—­Charges against them—­Letter of Orange in reply—­ Position and sentiments of the Prince—­Seizure of Count de Buren—­ Details of that transaction—­Petitions to the Council from Louvain and other places—­Sentence of death against the whole population of the Netherlands pronounced by the Spanish Inquisition and proclaimed by Philip—­Cruel inventions against heretics—­The Wild Beggars—­ Preliminary proceedings of the Council against Egmont and Horn—­