As already observed, the advent of Alva at the head of a foreign army was
the natural consequence of all which had gone before. The delusion of
the royal visit was still maintained, and the affectation of a possible
clemency still displayed, while the monarch sat quietly in his cabinet
without a remote intention of leaving Spain, and while the messengers of
his accumulated and long-concealed wrath were already descending upon
their prey. It was the deliberate intention of Philip, when the Duke
was despatched to the Netherlands, that all the leaders of the anti-
inquisition party, and all who had, at any time or in any way, implicated
themselves in opposition to the government, or in censure of its
proceedings, should be put to death. It was determined that the
provinces should be subjugated to the absolute domination of the council
of Spain, a small body of foreigners sitting at the other end of Europe,
a junta in which Netherlanders were to have no voice and exercise no
influence. The despotic government of the Spanish and Italian
possessions was to be extended to these Flemish territories, which were
thus to be converted into the helpless dependencies of a foreign and an
absolute crown. There was to be a re-organization of the inquisition,
upon the same footing claimed for it before the outbreak of the troubles,
together with a re-enactment and vigorous enforcement of the famous
edicts against heresy.

Such was the scheme recommended by Granvelle and Espinosa, and to be
executed by Alva. As part and parcel of this plan, it was also arranged
at secret meetings at the house of Espinosa, before the departure of the
Duke, that all the seigniors against whom the Duchess Margaret had made
so many complaints, especially the Prince of Orange, with the Counts
Egmont, Horn, and Hoogstraaten, should be immediately arrested and
brought to chastisement. The Marquis Berghen and the Baron Montigny,