Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
The dramatist has a right to pervert facts for the purpose of exciting sympathy for his hero; but in this case, Schiller argued, the effect is to degrade the character of Egmont and thus to alienate sympathy. Finally the review took exception to Egmont's vision of Freedom In the form of Claerchen; this, Schiller thought, was a deplorable plunge into opera at the end of a serious drama.
The battle of Gravelines had decided the question. The intrigues of the two Cardinals at Peronne having been sustained by Egmont's victory, all parties were ready for a peace.
This force comprised five hundred Belgian heavy dragoons under the chief nobles of the land, together with a selection, in even proportions, of Walloon, German, Spanish, and Italian troopers. Mayenne accordingly crossed the Seine at Mantes with an army of ten thousand foot, and, including Egmont's contingent, about four thousand horse.
Assonville had informed him, he wrote, that much complaint had been made on the subject by several gentlemen, at a supper of Count Egmont's. It was said that the King ought to have consulted them all, and the state councillors especially. The present nominees to the new episcopates were good enough, but it would be found, they said, that very improper personages would be afterwards appointed.
Egmont's name was in every one's mouth, and when she, too, saw the handsome, proud young hero, the idol, as it were, of a whole nation, gorgeous in velvet, silk, and glittering gems, curbing his fiery steed and bowing to the shouting populace with a winning smile, she thought she caught a glimpse of the future, and beheld the predecessor of him who some day would receive similar homage.
The provost-marshal, Spelle, sat on horseback below, with his red wand in his hand, little dreaming that for him a darker doom was reserved than that of which he was now the minister. The executioner was concealed beneath the draperies of the scaffold. At eleven o'clock, a company of Spanish soldiers, led by Julian Romero and Captain Salinas, arrived at Egmont's chamber.
He assured the King that he would neglect no effort to prevent any renewal of the tumults, and expressed the hope that his Majesty would be satisfied with his conduct, notwithstanding the calumnies of which the times were full. Noircarmes meanwhile, had unmasked his batteries, and opened his fire exactly according to Egmont's suggestions.
In passing he saluted many of his acquaintances; his hands were, like Egmont's, free, and he was dressed in a black doublet and cloak, with a Milan cap of the same color upon his head. When he had ascended, he cast his eyes upon the corpse, which lay under the cloth, and asked one of the bystanders if it was the body of his friend.
He was spared one pang, in his last hour, which had filled Egmont's cup with bitterness; tho, like him, he had a wife, he was to leave no orphan family to mourn him. As he trod the scaffold, the apparatus of death seemed to have no power to move him. He still repeated the declaration that, "often as he had offended his Maker, he had never, to his knowledge, committed any offense against the King."
"Amid all the perplexities of the Duchess Regent," Says a Walloon historian, "this virtuous princess was consoled by the exploits of Bakkerzeel, gentleman in Count Egmont's service. On one occasion he hanged twenty heretics, including a minister, at a single heat."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking