For long hours day by day Vargas and del Rio revelled in their work of butchery; and in all parts of the Netherlands the executioners were busy.

It was of no use for the accused to appeal to the charters and privileges of their provinces.

All alike were summoned to Brussels; _non curamus privilegios vestros_ declared Vargas in his ungrammatical Latin.

Hand in hand with the wholesale sentences of death went the confiscation of property.

Vast sums went into the treasury.