conspiracy which had been engendered within its walls. On the 1st June,
eighteen prisoners of distinction, including the two barons Batenburg,
Maximilian Kock, Blois de Treslong and others, were executed upon the
Horse Market, in Brussels. In the vigorous language of Hoogstraaten,
this horrible tragedy was enacted directly before the windows of that
"cruel animal, Noircarmes," who, in company of his friend, Berlaymont,
and the rest of the Blood-Council, looked out upon the shocking
spectacle. The heads of the victims were exposed upon stakes, to which
also their bodies were fastened. Eleven of these victims were afterward
deposited, uncoffined, in unconsecrated ground; the other seven were left
unburied to moulder on the gibbet. On the 2d June, Villars, the leader
in the Daalem rising, suffered on the scaffold, with three others. On
the 3d, Counts Egmont and Horn were brought in a carriage from Ghent to
Brussels, guarded by ten companies of infantry and one of cavalry. They
were then lodged in the "Brood-huis" opposite the Town Hall, on the great
square of Brussels. On the 4th, Alva having, as he solemnly declared
before God and the world, examined thoroughly the mass of documents
appertaining to those two great prosecutions which had only been closed
three days before, pronounced sentence against the illustrious
prisoners. These documents of iniquity signed and sealed by the Duke,
were sent to the Blood-Council, where they were read by Secretary Praets.
The signature of Philip was not wanting, for the sentences had been drawn
upon blanks signed by the monarch, of which the Viceroy had brought a
whole trunk full from Spain. The sentence against Egmont declared very
briefly that the Duke of Alva, having read all the papers and evidence in
the case, had found the Count guilty of high treason. It was proved that
Egmont had united with the confederates; that he had been a party to the
accursed conspiracy of the Prince of Orange; that he had taken the rebel
nobles under his protection, and that he had betrayed the Government and
the Holy Catholic Church by his conduct in Flanders. Therefore the Duke