after he had easily obtained from the Pope a dispensation of his
former oaths (which dispensation was the true cause of the war and
bloodshed since then;) and after he had tried what he could perform,
by dividing of their own nobility, under the government of his base
sister Margaret of Austria, and the Cardinal Granvile; he employed
that most merciless Spaniard Don Ferdinand Alvarez of Toledo, Duke
of Alva, followed with a powerful army of strange nations: by whom he
first slaughtered that renowned captain, the Earl of Egmont, Prince of
Gavare: and Philip Montmorency, Earl of Horn: made away Montigue,
and the Marquis of Bergues, and cut off in those six years (that Alva
governed) of gentlemen and others, eighteen thousand and six hundred,
by the hands of the hangman, besides all his other barbarous murders
and massacres. By whose ministry when he could not yet bring his
affairs to their wished ends, having it in his hope to work that
by subtility, which he had failed to perform by force; he sent for
governor his bastard brother Don John of Austria, a prince of great
hope, and very gracious to those people. But he, using the same papal
advantage that his predecessors had done, made no scruple to take oath
upon the Holy Evangelists, to observe the treaty made with the General
States; and to discharge the Low Countries of all Spaniards, and other
strangers therein garrisoned: towards whose pay and passport, the
Netherlands strained themselves to make payment of six hundred
thousand pounds. Which monies received, he suddenly surprised the
citadels of Antwerp and Nemours: not doubting (being unsuspected by
the states) to have possessed himself of all the mastering places
of those provinces. For whatsoever he overtly pretended, he held
in secret a contrary counsel with the Secretary Escovedo, Rhodus,
Barlemont, and others, ministers of the Spanish tyranny, formerly
practised, and now again intended. But let us now see the effect and
end of this perjury and of all other the Duke's cruelties. First, for