The Duke wrote a triumphant letter to his Majesty that very night. He
apologized that these important captures had been deferred so long but,
stated that he had thought it desirable to secure all these leading
personages at a single stroke. He then narrated the masterly manner in
which the operations had been conducted. Certainly, when it is
remembered that the Duke had only reached Brussels upon the 23d August,
and that the two Counts were securely lodged in prison on the 9th of
September, it seemed a superfluous modesty upon his part thus to excuse
himself for an apparent delay. At any rate, in the eyes of the world and
of posterity, his zeal to carry out the bloody commands of his master was
sufficiently swift.

The consternation was universal throughout the provinces when the arrests
became known. Egmont's great popularity and distinguished services
placed him so high above the mass of citizens, and his attachment to the
Catholic religion was moreover so well known, as to make it obvious that
no man could now be safe, when men like him were in the power of Alva and
his myrmidons. The animosity to the Spaniards increased hourly. The
Duchess affected indignation at the arrest of the two nobles, although
it nowhere appears that she attempted a word in their defence, or lifted,
at any subsequent moment, a finger to save them. She was not anxious to
wash her hands of the blood of two innocent men; she was only offended
that they had been arrested without her permission. The Duke had, it is
true, sent Berlaymont and Mansfeld to give her information of the fact,
as soon as the capture had been made, with the plausible excuse that
he preferred to save her from all the responsibility and all the
unpopularity of the measure, Nothing, however, could appease her wrath at
this and every other indication of the contempt in which he appeared to
hold the sister of his sovereign. She complained of his conduct daily to