ruffianly Spanish and Italian soldiers whom Alba had brought with him were quartered in all the houses--six in each house--and were robbing, murdering, and ravishing right and left. They were an unpaid mutinous rabble, who respected no distinction of nationality, faith, or sex, and their function was utterly to terrorise the Flemings into abject submission. When the people began to escape in shoals Alba considered it necessary to prevent this evasion of his terrorism, and began by hanging 500 citizens who were suspected of attempting to emigrate or to send property abroad. The people, in fact, were absolutely unresisting, and flocked to church, as Alba himself records, as plentifully as did “Spaniards at jubilee time.” At the execution of Egmont and Horn, Alba expressed his surprise to the king that the populace was so unmoved--much less so, indeed, than the Spanish soldiers who surrounded the scaffold--and he feared that the king’s clemency might raise their courage. Alba was determined that this should not happen if he could help it. Thus far, then, Philip must be held responsible for Alba’s acts, namely, for the first seizure of the nobles, and their condemnation by the tribunal of blood, to the number of about twenty, and for the terrorism over the friars and the citizens. But here probably Philip’s personal responsibility ends. He was not wantonly and fiercely cruel as Alba was. No consideration of any sort was allowed to stand in the way of what he held to be his sacred task, but he did not kill for the sake of killing. The flight of Orange’s mercenary Germans at Heliger Lee, and the consequent collapse of his first attempt at armed resistance, had been looked upon by most Flemings without any outward sign of sympathy, and the unprovoked, horrible holocaust of innocent citizens all over Flanders and Brabant which followed, must be laid at the door of Alba alone, who intended thus to strike such terror into the townsfolk as should effectually bridle them if Orange tried his fortune again; so with the nobles dead or in exile, the townspeople might be crushed without a show of resistance. As long as only their national or religious liberty was at stake, the Flemings bent their necks to the yoke, and Orange in his despairing attempt depended mainly upon German mercenaries and French Calvinists. On July 14, 1570, Alba the merciless could read from his gold-covered throne in Antwerp the amnesty of forgiveness and peace to all the subjects of the king: but when he ventured to lay hands on the wealth of the Netherlands, then the blood of the burgesses rose, and those who meekly saw themselves despoiled of their national rights stood up sturdily against the depletion of their fat money-bags. The seizure of the treasure by Elizabeth had been the last stroke to complete Alba’s penury. He had been importuning plaintively for money almost since his arrival; his troops had not been paid for two years, and were almost out of hand.