Duke of Alba Arrives in the Netherlands

August 22, 1567

The Duke of Alba marched into Brussels with ten thousand Spanish veterans and established the Council of Troubles, quickly nicknamed the Council of Blood. He arrested, tortured, and executed thousands of suspected heretics and rebels. Dutch resistance hardened into an eighty-year war of independence. His execution of Egmont and Hoorn alienated moderate opinion and transformed a political crisis into an unwinnable guerrilla war.