g glow, they
cannot but have recalled the words: 'Woe unto them that are with child
and to them that give suck in those days.' At least they could give
thanks that their flight was not in the winter.

Meanwhile Long Peter had not been idle. On 14 August he had a great
battle with the Hollanders off Hoorn. Eleven ships he took, and cast
their crews into the sea: 500 men, save one, a Gueldrian, struggling
in the calm summer waters and stretching out their hands to a foe who
knew no pity. In September he surrounded a merchant fleet. The
Easterlings escaped at heavy ransom; but the crews of three Holland
vessels were flung to the waves. Then he carried the war on to the
land, to glean what the Black Band had left. With 1200 men he took
Hoorn by escalade; plunder-laden and sated, they returned to the sea.
Nothing was too small or too helpless for his rapacity. Along the
coast they picked up a barge of Enckhuizen. Its only crew, master and
mate, were thrown overboard, and Peter's fleet sailed upon its way. We
must remember that the provinces engaged in this internecine strife
were not widely diverse in race, and that to-day they are peacefully
united under one governance.

The winter of 1517-18 was spent by the Black Band in Friesland. Three
thousand men who are prepared to take by force what is not given to
them, do not lie hungry in the cold. We may be sure that under them
the land had no rest. At Easter they began to move southwards in quest
of other victims and other employ. But as they halted between Venlo
and Roermond, resistance confronted them. Nassau had arrayed by his
side the Archbishop of Cologne and the Dukes of Juliers and Cleves:
the gates of the cities were closed and the ferry-boats that would
have carried them across the Maas had been kept on the other side.
Caught in a trap, the freebooters promised to lay down their weapons
and disperse. The disarmament proceeded quietly till one of the
company-leaders refused to part with a bombard, the new invention, of
which he was very proud. A trumpeter, seeing the man hesitate, sounded
a warning, and the containing troops stood on the alert. Readiness led
to action. Suddenly they fell on the helpless horde, for whom there
was no safety but in flight. A thousand were massacred before Nassau
and his confederates could check their men.

Erasmus was about to set out from Louvain to Basle, to work at a new
edition of the New Testament. Bands such as these were, of cour