The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1569-70 | Page 6

frightened, and hoping that no serious effort would be made to collect
the tax, consented, under certain restrictions, to its imposition.--The
principal conditions were a protest against the legality of the
proceeding, and the provision that the consent of no province should be
valid until that of all had been obtained. Holland, too, was induced to
give in its adhesion, although the city of Amsterdam long withheld its
consent; but the city and province of Utrecht were inexorable. They
offered a handsome sum in commutation, increasing the sum first
proposed from 70,000 to 200,000 florins, but they resolutely refused to

be saddled with this permanent tax. Their stout resistance was destined
to cost them dear. In the course of a few months Alva, finding them
still resolute in their refusal, quartered the regiment of Lombardy upon
them, and employed other coercive measures to bring them to reason.
The rude, insolent, unpaid and therefore insubordinate soldiery were
billeted in every house in the city, so that the insults which the
population were made to suffer by the intrusion of these ruffians at
their firesides would soon, it was thought, compel the assent of the
province to the tax. It was not so, however. The city and the province
remained stanch in their opposition. Accordingly, at the close of the
year (15th. December, 1569) the estates were summoned to appear
within fourteen days before the Blood Council. At the appointed time
the procureur-general was ready with an act of accusation,
accompanied, as was usually the case, with a simultaneous sentence of
condemnation. The indictment revived and recapitulated all previous
offences committed in the city and the province, particularly during the
troubles of 1566, and at the epoch of the treaty with Duchess Margaret.
The inhabitants and the magistrates, both in their individual and public
capacities, were condemned for heresy, rebellion, and misprision. The
city and province were accordingly pronounced guilty of high treason,
were deprived of all their charters, laws, privileges, freedoms, and
customs, and were declared to have forfeited all their property, real and
personal, together with all tolls, rents, excises, and imposts, the whole
being confiscated to the benefit of his Majesty.
The immediate execution of the sentence was, however, suspended, to
allow the estates opportunity to reply. An enormous mass of pleadings,
replies, replications, rejoinders, and apostilles was the result, which few
eyes were destined to read, and least of all those to whom they were
nominally addressed. They were of benefit to none save in the shape of
fees which they engendered to the gentlemen of the robe. It was six
months, however, before the case was closed. As there was no blood to
be shed, a summary process was not considered necessary. At last, on
the 14th July, the voluminous pile of documents was placed before
Vargas. It was the first time he had laid eyes upon them, and they were,
moreover, written in a language of which he did not understand a word.
Such, however, was his capacity for affairs, that a glance only at the
outside of the case enabled him to form his decision. Within half an

hour afterwards, booted and spurred, he was saying mass in the church
of Saint Gudule, on his way to pronounce sentence at Antwerp. That
judgment was rendered the same day, and confirmed the preceding act
of condemnation. Vargas went to his task as cheerfully as if it had been
murder. The act of outlawry and beggary was fulminated against the
city and province, and a handsome amount of misery for others, and of
plunder for himself, was the result of his promptness. Many thousand
citizens were ruined, many millions of property confiscated.
Thus was Utrecht deprived of all its ancient liberties, as a punishment
for having dared to maintain them. The clergy, too, of the province,
having invoked the bull "in Coena Domini," by which clerical property
was declared exempt from taxation, had excited the wrath of the Duke.
To wield so slight a bulrush against the man who had just been girded
with the consecrated and jewelled sword of the Pope, was indeed but a
feeble attempt at defence. Alva treated the Coena Domini with
contempt, but he imprisoned the printer who had dared to-republish it
at this juncture. Finding, moreover, that it had been put in press by the
orders of no less a person than Secretary La Torre, he threw that officer
also into prison, besides suspending him from his functions for a year.
The estates of the province and the magistracy of the city appealed to
his Majesty from the decision of the Duke. The case did not directly
concern the interests of religion, for although the heretical troubles of
1566 furnished the nominal motives of the condemnation, the
resistance to the tenth and twentieth