ister of every city, village, and hamlet throughout the Netherlands
showed the daily lists of men, women, and children thus sacrificed at the
shrine of the demon who had obtained the mastery over this unhappy land.
It was not often that an individual was of sufficient importance to be
tried--if trial it could be called--by himself. It was found more
expeditious to send them in batches to the furnace. Thus, for example, on
the 4th of January, eighty-four inhabitants of Valenciennes were
condemned; on another day, ninety-five miscellaneous individuals, from
different places in Flanders; on another, forty-six inhabitants of
Malines; on another, thirty-five persons from different localities, and
so on.

The evening of Shrovetide, a favorite holiday in the Netherlands,
afforded an occasion for arresting and carrying off a vast number of
doomed individuals at a single swoop. It was correctly supposed that the
burghers, filled with wine and wassail, to which perhaps the persecution
under which they lived lent an additional and horrible stimulus, might be
easily taken from their beds in great numbers, and be delivered over at
once to the council. The plot was ingenious, the net was spread
accordingly. Many of the doomed were, however, luckily warned of the
terrible termination which was impending over their festival, and
bestowed themselves in safety for a season. A prize of about five hundred
prisoners was all which rewarded the sagacity of the enterprise. It is
needless to add that they were all immediately executed. It is a
wearisome and odious task to ransack the mouldy records of three
centuries ago, in order to reproduce the obscure names of the thousands
who were thus sacrificed.. The dead have buried their dead, and are
forgotten. It is likewise hardly necessary to state that the proceedings
before the council were all 'ex parte', and that an information was
almost inevitably followed by a death-warrant. It sometimes happened even
that the zeal of the councillors outstripped the industry of the
commissioners. The sentences were occasionally in advance of the docket.
Thus upon one occasion a man's case was called for trial, but before the
investigation was commenced it was discovered that he had been already
executed. A cursory examination of the papers proved, moreover, as usual,
that the culprit had committed no crime. "No matter for that," said
Vargas, jocosely, "if he has died innocent, it will be all the better for