ath, were simultaneous. The door was
flung open, and a band of armed Spaniards rushed across the sacred
threshold. They fired a single volley upon the defenceless herd,
and then sprang in upon them with sword and dagger. A yell of despair
arose as the miserable victims saw how hopelessly they were engaged,
and beheld the ferocious faces of their butchers. The carnage within
that narrow space was compact and rapid. Within a few minutes all
were despatched, and among them Senator Gerrit, from whose table the
Spanish commander had but just risen. The church was then set on fire,
and the dead and dying were consumed to ashes together.

"Inflamed but not satiated, the Spaniards then rushed into the
streets, thirsty for fresh horrors. The houses were all rifled of
their contents, and men were forced to carry the booty to the camp,
who were then struck dead as their reward. The town was then fired
in every direction, that the skulking citizens might be forced from
their hiding-places. As fast as they came forth they were put to
death by their impatient foes. Some were pierced with rapiers, some
were chopped to pieces with axes, some were surrounded in the blazing
streets by troops of laughing soldiers, intoxicated, not with wine but
with blood, who tossed them to and fro with their lances, and derived a
wild amusement from their dying agonies. Those who attempted resistance
were crimped alive like fishes, and left to gasp themselves to death
in lingering torture. The soldiers becoming more and more insane, as
the foul work went on, opened the veins of some of their victims, and
drank their blood as if it were wine. Some of the burghers were for a
time spared, that they might witness the violation of their wives and,
daughters, and were then butchered in company with these still more
unfortunate victims. Miracles of brutality were accomplished. Neither
church nor hearth was sacred. Men were slain, women outraged at the
altars, in the streets, in their blazing homes. The life of Lambert
Hortensius was spared out of regard to his learning and genius, but he
hardly could thank his foes for the boon, for they struck his only son
dead, and tore his heart out before his father's eyes. Hardly any man
or woman survived, except by accident. A body of some hundred burghers
made their escape across the snow into the open country. They were,
however, overtaken, stripped stark naked, and hung upon the trees
by the feet, to freeze, or to per