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Updated: June 10, 2025
Such is their insolence, that they care no more for these great lords than for so many varlets." The writer, who had taken refuge, together with Jerome de Roda and other Spaniards, or "Hispaniolized" persons, in Antwerp citadel, proceeded to sketch the preparations which were going on in Brussels, and the counter measures which were making progress in Antwerp.
He begged me to write out my opinions on the subject, and to give him the benefit of my knowledge. I promised to do so, and Mengs fixed a day for him to come and dine with me at his house. The next day I moved my household goods to Mengs's house, and began my philosophical and physiological treatise on the colony. I called on Don Emmanuel de Roda, who was a man of letters, a 'rara aves' in Spain.
A letter from Jerome de Roda to the King was intercepted, giving an account of the transaction. In that document the senator gave the warmest praise to Sancho d'Avila, Julian Romero, Alonzo de Vargas, Francis Verdugo, as well as to the German colonels Fugger, Frondsberger, Polwiller, and others who had most exerted themselves in the massacre.
He believed him a consummate hypocrite, and as deadly a foe to the Netherlands as the Duke of Alva, or Philip himself. He had carefully studied twenty-five intercepted letters from the King, the Governor, Jerome de Roda, and others, placed recently in his hands by the Duke of Aerschot, and had found much to confirm previous and induce fresh suspicion.
To Don Emmanuel de Roda, a learned scholar, and the minister of justice, I wrote that I did not ask any favour but only simple justice. "Serve God and your master," said I. "Let his Catholic majesty save me from the hands of the infamous alcalde who has arrested me, an honest and a law-abiding man, who came to Spain trusting in his own innocence and the protection of the laws.
Jerome de Roda had been fortunate enough to make his escape out of Brussels, and now claimed to be sole Governor of the Netherlands, as the only remaining representative of the State Council. His colleagues were in durance at the capital. Their authority was derided.
But neither the upright principles nor enlarged ideas of the monarch, nor yet the influence exercised by Aranda, Campomanes, Floridablanca, and Roda, would have been sufficient to induce him to take a measure so violent, if there had not intervened a circumstance which necessarily appeared, in his eyes, an outrage on his dignity, a wound on his self-respect, and a threat against the legitimacy of his rights.
To these were soon added, however, by royal diploma, the Spaniard, Jerome de Roda, and the Netherlanders, Assonleville, Baron Rassenghiem and Arnold Sasbout. Thus, all the members, save one, of what had now become the executive body, were natives of the country. Roda was accordingly looked askance upon by his colleagues.
Vargas and Romero were the principal leaders of this infernal exploit; and De Roda gained a new title to his immortality of shame by standing forth as its apologist. The states-general, assembled at Ghent, were solemnly opened on the 14th of September.
Roda was provided by the King with a secret programme of instructions for the new Governor's guidance and Don Sancho d'Avila, for his countenance to the mutineers of Alost, had been applauded to the echo in Spain.
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