History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

up-stairs to a temporary prison; the windows were
closed; the walls were hung in black, and lights
were burned in it night and day -- a sad presage of
the yet gloomier fate that awaited him. Count Horn
was treated in a precisely similar way. At the end
of fourteen days the two noblemen were
conducted, under a strong guard, to the Castle of
Ghent. At the same time two other important
arrests were made -- -Bakkerzeel, the secretary of
Egmont; and Straalen, the wealthy Burgomaster of
Antwerp.[8]
These arrests spread terror over the whole
country. They convinced Romanists equally with
Protestants that the policy to be pursued was one of
indiscriminate oppression and violence. Count
Egmont had of late been, to say the least, no
lukewarm friend of the Government; his secretary,
Bakkerzeel, had signalised his zeal against
Protestantism by spilling Protestant blood, yet now
both of these men were on the road to the scaffold.
The very terror of Alva's name, before he came,
had driven from the Low Countries 100,000 of
their inhabitants. The dread inspired by the arrests
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