of the richest victims, he drew orders to his own benefit on their confiscated property.  The lion’s share of the plunder was appropriated by himself.  He desired the estate; of Francois de Glarges, Seigneur d’Eslesmes.  The gentleman had committed no offence of any kind, and, moreover, lived beyond the French frontier.  Nevertheless, in contempt of international law, the neighbouring territory was invaded, and d’Eslesmes dragged before the blood tribunal of Mons. Noircarmes had drawn up beforehand, in his own handwriting, both the terms of the accusation and of the sentence.  The victim was innocent and a Catholic, but he was rich.  He confessed to have been twice at the preaching, from curiosity, and to have omitted taking the sacrament at the previous Easter.  For these offences he was beheaded, and his confiscated estate adjudged at an almost nominal price to the secretary of Noircarmes, bidding for his master.  “You can do me no greater pleasure,” wrote Noircarmes to the council, “than to make quick work with all these rebels, and to proceed with the confiscation of their estates, real and personal.  Don’t fail to put all those to the torture out of whom anything can be got.”

Notwithstanding the unexampled docility of the commissioners, they found it difficult to extract from their redoubted chief a reasonable share in the wages of blood.  They did not scruple, therefore, to display their, own infamy, and to enumerate their own crimes, in order to justify their demand for higher salaries.  “Consider,” they said, in a petition to this end, “consider closely, all that is odious in our office, and the great number of banishments and of executions which we have pronounced among all our own relations and friends.”

It may be added, moreover, as a slight palliation for the enormous crimes committed by these men, that, becoming at last weary of their business, they urged Noircarmes to desist from the work of proscription.  Longehaye, one of the commissioners, even waited upon him personally, with a plea for mercy in favor of “the poor people, even beggars, who, although having borne arms during the siege, might then be pardoned.”  Noircarmes, in a rage at the proposition, said that “if he did not know the commissioners to be honest men, he should believe that their palms had been oiled,” and forbade any farther words on the subject.  When Longehaye still ventured to speak in favor of certain persons “who were very poor and simple, not charged with duplicity, and good Catholics besides,” he fared no better.  “Away with you!” cried Noircarmes in a great fury, adding that he had already written to have execution done upon the whole of them.  “Whereupon,” said poor blood-councillor Longehaye, in his letter to his colleagues, “I retired, I leave you to guess how.”

Thus the work went on day after day, month after month.  Till the 27th August of the following year (1573) the executioner never rested, and when Requesens, successor to Alva, caused the prisons of Mons to be opened, there were found still seventy-five individuals condemned to the block, and awaiting their fate.