Note 1108 — Chapter III

If we are to believe Bentivoglio, Backerzele was torn asunder by horses. "Da quattro cavalli fu smembrato vivo in Brusselles il Casembrot già segretario dell'Agamonte." (Guerra di Fiandra, p. 200.) But Alva's character, hard and unscrupulous as he may have been in carrying out his designs, does not warrant the imputation of an act of such wanton cruelty as this. Happily it is not justified by historic testimony; no notice of the fact being found in Strada, or Meteren, or the author of the Guerres Civiles du Pays-Bas, not to add other writers of the time, who cannot certainly be charged with undue partiality to the Spaniards. If so atrocious a deed had been perpetrated, it would be passing strange that it should not have found a place in the catalogue of crimes imputed to Alva by the prince of Orange. See, in particular, his letter to Schwendi, written in an agony of grief and indignation, soon after he had learned the execution of his friends. Archives de la Maison d'Orange-Nassau, tom. III. p. 244.