Adolphus of Nassau. The triumph of the invaders was of short duration.
Alva himself took in hand the task of dealing with the rebels. At the
head of 15,000 troops he drove before him the levies of Nassau to
Jemmingen on the estuary of the Ems, and here with the loss of only
seven men he completely annihilated them. Lewis himself and a few others
alone escaped by throwing themselves into the water and swimming for
their lives.

The action at Heiligerlee, by compelling the governor-general to take
the field, had hastened the fate of Egmont and Hoorn. After their arrest
the two noblemen were kept in solitary confinement in the citadel of
Ghent for several months, while the long list of charges against them
was being examined by the Council of Troubles--in other words by Vargas
and del Rio. These charges they angrily denied; and great efforts were
made on their behalf by the wife of Egmont and the dowager Countess of
Hoorn. Appeals were made to the governor-general and to Philip himself,
either for pardon on the ground of services rendered to the State, or at
least for a trial, as Knights of the Golden Fleece, before the Court of
the Order. The Emperor Maximilian himself pleaded with Philip for
clemency, but without avail. Their doom had been settled in advance, and
the king was inflexible. Alva accordingly determined that they should
be executed before he left Brussels for his campaign in the north. On
June 2, the council, after refusing to hear any further evidence in the
prisoners' favour, pronounced them guilty of high treason; and Alva at
once signed the sentences of death. Egmont and Hoorn the next day were
brought by a strong detachment of troops from Ghent to Brussels and were
confined in a building opposite the town hall, known as the Broodhuis.
On June 5, their heads were struck off upon a scaffold erected in the
great square before their place of confinement. Both of them met their
death with the utmost calmness and courage. The effect of this momentous