Page:The silent prince - a story of the Netherlands (IA cu31924008716957).pdf/186

 Only sixty out of the three thousand human beings escaped. Every house was burned to the ground. This merciless butchery was accomplished to the sound of that terrible battle-cry, "Santiago! Santiago! España! España! á sangre, á carne, á fuego, á sacco!" (St. James, Spain, blood, flesh, fire, sack!)

And who can forget Mookerhyde, where the gallant Louis of Nassau fell, and Antwerp, and Haarlem, and Leyden? Call them battles, if you please, if battle it is when sick men, helpless women and little children kneel to receive the death blow! At every step which Alva and his soldiers took, the lust for slaughter found ample satisfaction.

Let us hasten from these scenes. The sickening smell of blood is everywhere, and God's pure air is polluted by the odor.

In the reception-room formerly used by the Regent for private audiences, sat the Duke of Alva and Baron Berlaymont.

The pen-pictures of Alva, which history has kept alive, lead one to infer that he was a repulsive, blood-thirsty villain in appearance. Such was not the case. It is true that Alva possessed few virtues, and for a kind of patient vindictiveness and ferocity he was not excelled by the beasts of the forest, and but rarely equalled by any human being. Still there was nothing forbidding in his personal appearance.