United States or Aruba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As to the Catholic religion, I take it under my very particular protection. You will ask why I am in Mons at the head of an armed force: are any of you ignorant of Alva's cruelties? The overthrow of this tyrant is as much the interest of the King as of the people, therefore there is nothing in my present conduct inconsistent with fidelity to his Majesty.
ALVA'S RULE. Philip now sent into the Netherlands the Duke of Alva, an officer of considerable military capacity, cold, arrogant, and merciless in his temper. His force consisted of ten thousand men. A tribunal was erected by him, called the "Council of Blood."
Requesens performed all that depended on him, to gain the confidence of the people. He caused Alva's statue to be removed; and hoped to efface the memory of the tyrant by dissolving the Council of Blood and abandoning the obnoxious taxes which their inventor had suspended rather than abolished.
Moreover, there were symptoms that Alva's favor was on the wane. The King had not been remarkably struck with the merits of the new financial measures, and had expressed much, anxiety lest the trade of the country should suffer. The Duke was known to be desirous of his recal.
Duke Alva's inflexible sternness, the mildness of his successor Requescens, Don John of Austria's insidious cunning, and the active and imperious mind of the Prince of Parma gave as many opposite directions to the war, while the plan of rebellion remained the same in a single head, who, as he saw it clearly, pursued it with vigor.
The KING and DUKE ALVA. Is it true I have no faithful servant! ALVA. How? KING. A blow Aimed at my life in its most vital part! Full well 'twas known, yet no one warned me of it. A blow aimed at your majesty! and yet Escape your Alva's eye? Know you this writing? ALVA. It is the prince's hand. Do you suspect Then nothing? Often have you cautioned me Gainst his ambition.
Bossu, Alva's stadholder for Holland, had formally announced the system hitherto pursued at Mechlin, Zutphen, and Naarden, as the deliberate policy of the government. The King's representative had formally proclaimed the extermination of man, woman; and child in every city which opposed his authority, but the promulgation and practice of such a system had an opposite effect to the one intended.
They sketched the history of Alva's administration; his entrapping the most eminent nobles by false promises, and delivering them to the executioner; his countless sentences of death, outlawry, and confiscation; his erection of citadels to curb, his imposition of the tenth and twentieth penny to exhaust the land; his Blood Council and its achievements; and the immeasurable, woe produced by hanging, burning, banishing, and plundering, during his seven years of residence.
On the 25th Sept. 1571, a commission of Governor-General of the Netherlands was at last issued to John de la Cerda, Duke of Medina Coeli. Philip, in compliance with the Duke's repeated requests, and perhaps not entirely satisfied with the recent course of events in the provinces, had at last, after great hesitation, consented to Alva's resignation.
The Duke of Alva, while he was alive, and the Prince of Parma, who commanded in the Netherlands in Alva's place, advised peace if peace could be had on reasonable terms.
Word Of The Day