The hangman was making ready his cords and ladders; Don Frederic of
Toledo was closeted with President Viglius, who, somewhat against his
will, was aroused at midnight to draw the warrants for these impromptu
executions; Alva was waiting with grim impatience for the dawn upon which
the show was to be exhibited, when an unforeseen event suddenly arrested
the homely tragedy. In the night arrived the intelligence that the town
of Brill had been captured. The Duke, feeling the full gravity of the
situation, postponed the chastisement which he had thus secretly planned
to a more convenient season, in order without an instant's hesitation to
avert the consequences of this new movement on the part of the rebels.
The seizure of Brill was the Deus ex machina which unexpectedly solved
both the inextricable knot of the situation and the hangman's noose.

Allusion has more than once been made to those formidable partisans of
the patriot cause, the marine outlaws. Cheated of half their birthright
by nature, and now driven forth from their narrow isthmus by tyranny, the
exiled Hollanders took to the ocean. Its boundless fields, long arable
to their industry, became fatally fruitful now that oppression was
transforming a peaceful seafaring people into a nation of corsairs.
Driven to outlawry and poverty, no doubt many Netherlanders plunged
into crime. The patriot party had long sine laid aside the respectful
deportment which had provoked the sarcasms of the loyalists. The
beggars of the sea asked their alms through the mouths of their cannon.
Unfortunately, they but too often made their demands upon both friend and
foe. Every ruined merchant, every banished lord, every reckless mariner,
who was willing to lay the commercial world under contribution to repair
his damaged fortunes, could, without much difficulty, be supplied with a
vessel and crew at some northern port, under color of cruising against
the Viceroy's government. Nor was the ostensible motive simply a
pretext. To make war upon Alva was the leading object of all these