There was now leisure for the General to devote his whole energies against the little city of Alkmaar.  On that bank and shoal, the extreme verge of habitable earth, the spirit of Holland’s Freedom stood at bay.  The grey towers of Egmont Castle and of Egmont Abbey rose between the city and the sea, and there the troops sent by the Prince of Orange were quartered during the very brief period in which the citizens wavered as to receiving them.  The die was soon cast, however, and the Prince’s garrison admitted.  The Spaniards advanced, burned the village of Egmont to the ground as soon as the patriots had left it, and on the 21st of August Don Frederic, appearing before the walls, proceeded formally to invest Allanaar.  In a few days this had been so thoroughly accomplished that, in Alva’s language, “it was impossible for a sparrow to enter or go out of the city.”  The odds were somewhat unequal.  Sixteen thousand veteran troops constituted the besieging force.  Within the city were a garrison of eight hundred soldiers, together with thirteen hundred burghers, capable of bearing arms.  The rest of the population consisted of a very few refugees, besides the women and children.  Two thousand one hundred able-bodied men, of whom only about one-third were soldiers, to resist sixteen thousand regulars.

Nor was there any doubt as to the fate which was reserved for them, should they succumb.  The Duke was vociferous at the ingratitude with which his clemency had hitherto been requited.  He complained bitterly of the ill success which had attended his monitory circulars; reproached himself with incredible vehemence, for his previous mildness, and protested that, after having executed only twenty-three hundred persons at the surrender of Harlem, besides a few additional burghers since, he had met with no correspondent demonstrations of affection.  He promised himself, however, an ample compensation for all this ingratitude, in the wholesale vengeance which he purposed to wreak upon Alkmaar.  Already he gloated in anticipation over the havoc which would soon be let loose within those walls.  Such ravings, if invented by the pen of fiction, would seem a puerile caricature; proceeding, authentically, from his own,—­they still appear almost too exaggerated for belief.  “If I take Alkmaar,” he wrote to Philip, “I am resolved not to leave a single creature alive; the knife shall be put to every throat.  Since the example of Harlem has proved of no use, perhaps an example of cruelty will bring the other cities to their senses.”

He took occasion also to read a lecture to the party of conciliation in Madrid, whose counsels, as he believed, his sovereign was beginning to heed.  Nothing, he maintained, could be more senseless than the idea of pardon and clemency.  This had been sufficiently proved by recent events.  It was easy for people at a distance to talk about gentleness, but those upon the spot knew better.  Gentleness had produced