Horrors like these were sure to force reprisals on the part of the maddened patriots.  De la Marck carried on his daring exploits with a cruelty which excited the indignation of the Prince of Orange, by whom he was removed from his command.  The contest was for a while prosecuted with a decrease of vigor proportioned to the serious losses on both sides; money and the munitions of war began to fail; and though the Spaniards succeeded in taking The Hague, they were repulsed before Alkmaer with great loss, and their fleet was almost entirely destroyed in a naval combat on the Zuyder Zee.  The count Bossu, their admiral, was taken in this fight, with about three hundred of his best sailors.

Holland was now from one end to the other the theatre of the most shocking events.  While the people performed deeds of the greatest heroism, the perfidy and cruelty of the Spaniards had no bounds.  The patriots saw more danger in submission than in resistance; each town, which was in succession subdued, endured the last extremities of suffering before it yielded, and victory was frequently the consequence of despair.  This unlooked-for turn in affairs decided the king to remove Alva, whose barbarous and rapacious conduct was now objected to even by Philip, when it produced results disastrous to his cause.  Don Luis Zanega y Requesens, commander of the order of Malta, was named to the government of the Netherlands.  He arrived at Brussels on the 17th of November, 1573; and on the 18th of that following month, the monster whom he succeeded set out for Spain, loaded with the booty to which he had waded through oceans of blood, and with the curses of the country, which, however, owed its subsequent freedom to the impulse given by his intolerable cruelty.  He repaired to Spain; and after various fluctuations of favor and disgrace at the hands of his congenial master, he died in his bed, at Lisbon, in 1582, at the advanced age of seventy-four years.

CHAPTER X

TO THE PACIFICATION OF GHENT

A.D. 1573—­1576

The character of Requesens was not more opposed to that of his predecessor, than were the instructions given to him for his government.  He was an honest, well-meaning, and moderate man, and the king of Spain hoped that by his influence and a total change of measures he might succeed in recalling the Netherlands to obedience.  But, happily for the country, this change was adopted too late for success; and the weakness of the new government completed the glorious results which the ferocity of the former had prepared.