Books: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1572
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John Lothrop Motley >> The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1572
Notwithstanding the unexampled docility of the commissioners, they found
it difficult to extract from their redoubted chief a reasonable share in
the wages of blood. They did not scruple, therefore, to display their,
own infamy, and to enumerate their own crimes, in order to justify their
demand for higher salaries. "Consider," they said, in a petition to this
end, "consider closely, all that is odious in our office, and the great
number of banishments and of executions which we have pronounced among
all our own relations and friends."
It may be added, moreover, as a slight palliation for the enormous crimes
committed by these men, that, becoming at last weary of their business,
they urged Noircarmes to desist from the work of proscription.
Longehaye, one of the commissioners, even waited upon him personally,
with a plea for mercy in favor of "the poor people, even beggars, who,
although having borne arms during the siege, might then be pardoned."
Noircarmes, in a rage at the proposition, said that "if he did not know
the commissioners to be honest men, he should believe that their palms
had been oiled," and forbade any farther words on the subject. When
Longehaye still ventured to speak in favor of certain persons "who were
very poor and simple, not charged with duplicity, and good Catholics
besides," he fared no better. "Away with you!" cried Noircarmes in a
great fury, adding that he had already written to have execution done
upon the whole of them. "Whereupon," said poor blood-councillor
Longehaye, in his letter to his colleagues, "I retired, I leave you to
guess how."
Thus the work went on day after day, month after month. Till the 27th
August of the following year (1573) the executioner never rested, and
when Requesens, successor to Alva, caused the prisons of Mons to be
opened, there were found still seventy-five individuals condemned to the
block, and awaiting their fate.
It is the most dreadful commentary upon the times in which these
transactions occurred, that they could sink so soon into oblivion.
The culprits took care to hide the records of their guilt, while
succeeding horrors, on a more extensive scale, at other places, effaced
the memory of all these comparatively obscure murders and spoliations.
The prosperity of Mons, one of the most flourishing and wealthy
manufacturing towns in the Netherlands, was annihilated, but there were
so many cities in the same condition that its misery was hardly
remarkable. Nevertheless, in our own days, the fall of a mouldering
tower in the ruined Chateau de Naast at last revealed the archives of all
these crimes. How the documents came to be placed there remains a
mystery, but they have at last been brought to light.
The Spaniards had thus recovered Mons, by which event the temporary
revolution throughout the whole Southern Netherlands was at an end.
The keys of that city unlocked the gates of every other in Brabant and
Flanders. The towns which had so lately embraced the authority of Orange
now hastened to disavow the Prince, and to return to their ancient,
hypocritical, and cowardly allegiance. The new oaths of fidelity were
in general accepted by Alva, but the beautiful archiepiscopal city of
Mechlin was selected for an example and a sacrifice.
There were heavy arrears due to the Spanish troops. To indemnify them,
and to make good his blasphemous prophecy of Divine chastisement for
its past misdeeds, Alva now abandoned this town to the licence of his
soldiery. By his command Don Frederic advanced to the gates and demanded
its surrender. He was answered by a few shots from the garrison. Those
cowardly troops, however, having thus plunged the city still more deeply
into the disgrace which, in Alva's eyes, they had incurred by receiving
rebels within their walls after having but just before refused admittance
to the Spanish forces, decamped during the night, and left the place
defenceless.
Early next morning there issued from the gates a solemn procession of
priests, with banner and crozier, followed by a long and suppliant throng
of citizens, who attempted by this demonstration to avert the wrath of
the victor. While the penitent psalms were resounding, the soldiers were
busily engaged in heaping dried branches and rubbish into the moat.
Before the religious exercises were concluded, thousands had forced the
gates or climbed the walls; and entered the city with a celerity which
only the hope of rapine could inspire. The sack instantly commenced.
The property of friend and foe, of Papist and Calvinist, was
indiscriminately rifled. Everything was dismantled and destroyed.
"Hardly a nail," said a Spaniard, writing soon afterwards from Brussels,
"was left standing in the walls." The troops seemed to imagine
themselves in a Turkish town, and wreaked the Divine vengeance which
Alva had denounced upon the city with an energy which met with his
fervent applause.
Three days long the horrible scene continued, one day for the benefit of
the Spaniards, two more for that of the Walloons and Germans. All the
churches, monasteries, religious houses of every kind, were completely
sacked. Every valuable article which they contained, the ornaments of
altars, the reliquaries, chalices, embroidered curtains, and carpets of
velvet or damask, the golden robes of the priests, the repositories of
the host, the precious vessels of chrism and extreme unction, the rich
clothing and jewellery adorning the effigies of the Holy Virgin, all were
indiscriminately rifled by the Spanish soldiers. The holy wafers were
trampled underfoot, the sacramental wine was poured upon the ground, and,
in brief, all the horrors which had been committed by the iconoclasts in
their wildest moments, and for a thousandth part of which enormities
heretics had been burned in droves, were now repeated in Mechlin by the
especial soldiers of Christ, by Roman Catholics who had been sent to the
Netherlands to avenge the insults offered to the Roman Catholic faith.
The motive, too, which inspired the sacrilegious crew was not fanaticism,
but the, desire of plunder. The property of Romanists was taken as
freely as that of Calvinists, of which sect there were; indeed, but few
in the archiepiscopal city. Cardinal Granvelle's house was rifled. The
pauper funds deposited in the convents were not respected. The beds were
taken from beneath sick and dying women, whether lady abbess or hospital
patient, that the sacking might be torn to pieces in search of hidden
treasure.
The iconoclasts of 1566 had destroyed millions of property for the sake
of an idea, but they had appropriated nothing. Moreover, they had
scarcely injured a human being; confining their wrath to graven images.
The Spaniards at Mechlin spared neither man nor woman. The murders and
outrages would be incredible, were they not attested by most respectable
Catholic witnesses. Men were butchered in their houses, in the streets,
at the altars. Women were violated by hundreds in churches and in grave-
yards. Moreover, the deed had been as deliberately arranged as it was
thoroughly performed. It was sanctioned by the highest authority. Don
Frederic, Son of Alva, and General Noircarmes were both present at the
scene, and applications were in vain made to them that the havoc might be
stayed. "They were seen whispering to each other in the ear on their
arrival," says an eye-witness and a Catholic, "and it is well known that
the affair had been resolved upon the preceding day. The two continued
together as long as they remained in the city." The work was, in truth,
fully accomplished. The ultra-Catholic, Jean Richardot, member of the
Grand Council, and nephew of the Bishop of Arras, informed the State
Council that the sack of Mechlin had been so horrible that the poor and
unfortunate mothers had not a single morsel of bread to put in the mouths
of their children, who were dying before their eyes--so insane and cruel
had been the avarice of the plunderers. "He could say more," he added,
"if his hair did not stand on end, not only at recounting, but even at
remembering the scene."
Three days long the city was abandoned to that trinity of furies which
ever wait upon War's footsteps--Murder, Lust, and Rapine--under whose
promptings human beings become so much more terrible than the most
ferocious beasts. In his letter to his master, the Duke congratulated
him upon these foul proceedings as upon a pious deed well accomplished.
He thought it necessary, however; to excuse himself before the public in
a document, which justified the sack of Mechlin by its refusal to accept
his garrison a few months before, and by the shots which had been
discharged at his troops as they approached the city. For these
offences, and by his express order, the deed was done. Upon his
head must the guilt for ever rest.
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