[Footnote *: Motley, _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, part ii., chapter
vi.]
[Illustration: YPRES. Place du Musee (showing Top Part of the Belfry).]
A grim memorial of those troublous times is still preserved at
Ypres. The Place du Musee is a quiet corner of the town, where a
Gothic house with double gables contains a collection of old paintings,
medals, instruments of torture, and some other curiosities. It was
the Bishop of Ypres who, at midnight on June 4, 1568, announced to
Count Egmont, in his prison at Brussels, that his hour had come; and
the cross-hilted sword, with its long straight blade, which hangs
on the wall of the Museum is the sword with which the executioner
'severed his head from his shoulders at a single blow' on the following
morning. The same weapon, a few minutes later, was used for the
despatch of Egmont's friend, Count Horn.
Before the end of that dismal sixteenth century Flanders regained
some of the liberties for which so much blood had been shed; but
while the Protestant Dutch Republic rose in the north, the 'Catholic'
or 'Spanish' Netherlands in the south remained in the possession
of Spain until the marriage of Philip's daughter Isabella to the
Archduke Albert, when these provinces were given as a marriage
portion to the bride.
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