The defeat of Heiligerlee hurried on the doom of the two Counts. Alva, anxious to retrieve the disaster in person, was determined not to leave them alive behind him. The counsel for the prisoners had hitherto delayed to produce their evidence, probably in the hope that the exertions made in favour of their clients by the Duke of Lorraine, by many of the German princes,[69] and even by the Emperor himself, might at least secure them a trial before the order of the Golden Fleece, of which they were members. This privilege was, however, refused them, on the ground that it did not extend to charges of treason. On the 1st of June, a decree was published, declaring that the time allowed for the production of witnesses had expired. On the following day, Vargas and del Rio pronounced the prisoners guilty of treason, and the sentence was confirmed by Alva. They were convicted of having given their support to the Confederate nobles, who signed the Compromise; of having shown favour to the sectaries in their respective governments of Flanders and Artois, of Gueldres and Zutphen; and of being parties to the conspiracy of the Prince of Orange. On June 5, they were led to execution in the market-place of Brussels. A few days before, the secretary of Egmont, Backerzell, and the Burgomaster of Antwerp, had shared the same fate, after having been cruelly tortured in the vain hope of extorting evidence from them against Egmont and Hoorne. That the trial and condemnation of these two nobles was flagrantly illegal is not to be questioned. It violated the ancient privilege that no Fleming should be tried by a foreign judge, and the right, definitely acknowledged by a law of 1531, of the Knights of the Golden Fleece to be tried by their own order, a law which Philip himself had confirmed in 1550. Moreover, the court had been erected without a royal warrant; and the cause was decided before the defendants had produced their evidence. Nor does it appear that, apart from the technical aspects of the question, Egmont and Hoorne had been guilty of treason. As Catholics they certainly had no sympathy with the Sectaries; and this their conduct at the time of the Iconoclastic riots shows; and if they indirectly supported the movement of the Confederates who signed the ‘Compromise,’ there is no proof that they intended to appeal to arms, or to throw off the Spanish yoke--or that they did anything more than insist, perhaps with somewhat too great vehemence, on the constitutional privileges of their country. | Montigny condemned and secretly executed in Spain. | March 1570.