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Rise of the Dutch Republic, the — Volume 13: 1567, part II by John Lothrop Motley
page 26 of 51 (50%)
movements for many days. The capture of Bakkerzeel was accomplished with
equal adroitness at about the same hour.

Alva, while he sat at the council board with Egmont and Horn, was
secretly informed that those important personages, Bakkerzeel and
Straalen, with the private secretary of the Admiral, Alonzo de la Loo,
in addition, had been thus successfully arrested. He could with
difficulty conceal his satisfaction, and left the apartment immediately
that the trap might be sprung upon the two principal victims of his
treachery. He had himself arranged all the details of these two
important arrests, while his natural son, the Prior Don Ferdinando,
had been compelled to superintend the proceedings. The plot had been
an excellent plot, and was accomplished as successfully as it bad been
sagaciously conceived. None but Spaniards had been employed in any part
of the affair. Officers of high rank in his Majesty's army had performed
the part of spies and policemen with much adroitness, nor was it to be
expected that the duty would seem a disgrace, when the Prior of the
Knights of Saint John was superintendent of the operations, when the
Captain-General of the Netherlands had arranged the whole plan, and when
all, from subaltern to viceroy, had received minute instructions as to
the contemplated treachery from the great chief of the Spanish police,
who sat on the throne of Castile and Aragon.

No sooner were these gentlemen in custody than the secretary Albornoz was
dispatched to the house of Count Horn, and to that of Bakkerzeel, where
all papers were immediately seized, inventoried, and placed in the hands
of the Duke. Thus, if amid the most secret communications of Egmont and
Horn or their correspondents, a single treasonable thought should be
lurking, it was to go hard but it might be twisted into a cord strong
enough to strangle them all.
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