ng possession of two, three, and even twelve thousand ducats each.
The women were not generally outraged, but they were stripped almost
entirely naked, lest they should conceal treasure which belonged to their
conquerors, and they were slashed in the face with knives, partly in
sport, partly as a punishment for not giving up property which was not in
their possession. The soldiers even cut off the arms of many among these
wretched women, and then turned them loose, maimed and naked, into the
blazing streets; for the town, on the 28th, was fired in a hundred
places, and was now one general conflagration. The streets were already
strewn with the corpses of the butchered garrison and citizens; while the
survivors were now burned in their houses. Human heads, limbs, and
trunks, were mingled among the bricks and rafters of the houses, which
were falling on every side. The fire lasted day and night, without an
attempt being made to extinguish it; while the soldiers dashed like
devils through flame and smoke in search of booty. Bearing lighted
torches, they descended into every subterrranean vault and receptacle, of
which there were many in the town, and in every one of which they hoped
to discover hidden treasure. The work of killing, plundering, and burning
lasted nearly three days and nights. The streets, meanwhile, were
encumbered with heaps of corpses, not a single one of which had been
buried since the capture of the town. The remains of nearly all the able
bodied male population, dismembered, gnawed by dogs or blackened by fire,
polluted the midsummer air meantime, the women had been again driven into
the cathedral, where they had housed during the siege, and where they now
crouched together in trembling expectation of their fate.' On the 29th
August, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Philip issued an order that
every woman, without an exception, should be driven out of the city into
the French territory. Saint Quentin, which seventy years before had been
a Flemish town, was to be re-annexed, and not a single man, woman, or
child who could speak the French language was to remain another hour in
the place. The tongues of the men had been effectually silenced. The
women, to the number of three thousand five hundred, were now compelled
to leave the cathedral and the city. Some were in a starving condition;
others had been desperately wounded; all, as they passed through the
ruinous streets of what had been their home, were com