wn from their pedestals. The paintings that lined the walls of
the cathedral were cut into shreds. Many of these were the choicest
specimens of Flemish art, even then, in its dawn, giving promise of the
glorious day which was to shed a lustre over the land.

But the pride of the cathedral, and of Antwerp, was the great organ,
renowned throughout the Netherlands, not more for its dimensions than
its perfect workmanship. With their ladders the rioters scaled the lofty
fabric, and with their implements soon converted it, like all else they
laid their hands on, into a heap of rubbish.

The ruin was now universal. Nothing beautiful, nothing holy, was spared.
The altars--and there were no less than seventy in the vast
edifice--were overthrown one after another; their richly embroidered
coverings rudely rent away; their gold and silver vessels appropriated
by the plunderers. The sacramental bread was trodden under foot; the
wine was quaffed by the miscreants, in golden chalices, to the health of
one another, or of the Gueux; and the holy oil was profanely used to
anoint their shoes and sandals. The sculptured tracery on the walls, the
costly offerings that enriched the shrines, the screens of gilded
bronze, the delicately carved wood-work of the pulpit, the marble and
alabaster ornaments, all went down under the fierce blows of the
iconoclasts. The pavement was strewed with the ruined splendors of a
church, which in size and magnificence was perhaps second only to St.
Peter's among the churches of Christendom.

As the light of day faded, the assailants supplied its place with such
light as they could obtain from the candles which they snatched from the
altars. It was midnight before the work of destruction was completed.
Thus toiling in darkness, feebly dispelled by tapers the rays of which
could scarcely penetrate the vaulted distances of the cathedral, it is a
curious circumstance--if true--than no one was injured by the heavy
masses of timber, stone, and metal that were everywhere falling around
them.[812] The whole number engaged in this work is said not to have
exceeded a hundred men, women, and boys,--women of the lowest
description, dressed in men's attire.

When their task was completed, they sallied forth in a body from the
doors of the cathedral, some singing the Psalms of David, others roaring
out the fanatical war-cry of "_Vivent les Gueux!_" Flushed with success,
and joined on the way by stragglers like themsel