Note 1068 — Chapter III

It will be understood that I am speaking of the period embraced in this portion of the history, terminating at the beginning of June, 1568, when the Council of Blood had been in active operation about four months,—the period when the sword of legal persecution fell heaviest. Alva, in the letter above cited to Philip, admits eight hundred—including three hundred to be examined after Easter—as the number of victims. (Documentos Inéditos, tom. IV. p. 489.) Viglius, in a letter of the twenty-ninth of March, says fifteen hundred had been already cited before the tribunal, the greater part of whom—they had probably fled the country—were condemned for contumacy. (Epist. ad Hopperum, p. 415.) Grotius, alluding to this period, speaks even more vaguely of the multitude of the victims, as innumerable. "Stipatæ reis custodiæ, innumeri mortales necati: ubique una species ut captæ civitatis." (Annales, p. 29.) So also Hooft, cited by Brandt: "The gallows, the wheels, stakes, and trees in the highways, were loaden with carcasses or limbs of such as had been hanged, beheaded, or roasted; so that the air, which God had made for respiration of the living, was now become the common grave or habitation of the dead." (Reformation in the Low Countries, vol. I. p. 261.) Language like this, however expressive, does little for statistics.