Even Philip, inspired by secret views, became wearied of the Governor, who, at an early period, had already given offence by his arrogance.  To commemorate his victories, the Viceroy had erected a colossal statue, not to his monarch, but to himself.  To proclaim the royal pardon, he had seated himself upon a golden throne.  Such insolent airs could be ill forgiven by the absolute King.  Too cautious to provoke an open rupture, he allowed the Governor, after he had done all his work, and more than all his work, to retire without disgrace, but without a triumph.  For the sins of that administration, master and servant are in equal measure responsible.

The character of the Duke of Alva, so far as the Netherlands are concerned, seems almost like a caricature.  As a creation of fiction, it would seem grotesque:  yet even that hardy, historical scepticism, which delights in reversing the judgment of centuries, and in re-establishing reputations long since degraded to the dust, must find it difficult to alter this man’s position.  No historical decision is final; an appeal to a more remote posterity, founded upon more accurate evidence, is always valid; but when the verdict has been pronounced upon facts which are undisputed, and upon testimony from the criminal’s lips, there is little chance of a reversal of the sentence.  It is an affectation of philosophical candor to extenuate vices which are not only avowed, but claimed as virtues.

[The time is past when it could be said that the cruelty of Alva, or the enormities of his administration, have been exaggerated by party violence.  Human invention is incapable of outstripping the truth upon this subject.  To attempt the defence of either the man or his measures at the present day is to convict oneself of an amount of ignorance or of bigotry against which history and argument are alike powerless.  The publication of the Duke’s letters in the correspondence of Simancas and in the Besancon papers, together with that compact mass of horror, long before the world under the title of “Sententien van Alva,” in which a portion only of the sentences of death and banishment pronounced by him during his reign, have been copied from the official records—­these in themselves would be a sufficient justification of all the charges ever brought by the most bitter contemporary of Holland or Flanders.  If the investigator should remain sceptical, however, let him examine the “Registre des Condamnes et Bannia a Cause des Troubles des Pays Bas,” in three, together with the Records of the “Conseil des Troubles,” in forty-three folio volumes, in the Royal Archives at Brussels.  After going through all these chronicles of iniquity, the most determined historic, doubter will probably throw up the case.]

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