ves, they burst open the
doors of one church after another; and by the time morning broke, the
principal temples in the city had been dealt with in the same ruthless
manner as the cathedral.[813]

No attempt all this time was made to stop these proceedings on the part
of magistrates or citizens. As they beheld from their windows the bodies
of armed men hurrying to and fro by the gleam of their torches, and
listened to the sounds of violence in the distance, they seem to have
been struck with a panic. The Catholics remained within doors, fearing a
general rising of the Protestants. The Protestants feared to move
abroad, lest they should be confounded with the rioters. Some imagined
their own turn might come next, and appeared in arms at the entrances of
their houses, prepared to defend them against the enemy.

[Sidenote: SACRILEGIOUS OUTRAGES.]

When gorged with the plunder of the city, the insurgents poured out at
the gates, and fell with the same violence on the churches, convents,
and other religious edifices in the suburbs. For three days these dismal
scenes continued, without resistance on the part of the inhabitants.
Amidst the ruin in the cathedral, the mob had alone spared the royal
arms and the escutcheons of the knights of the Golden Fleece, emblazoned
on the walls. Calling this to mind, they now returned into the city to
complete the work. But some of the knights, who were at Antwerp,
collected a handful of their followers, and, with a few of the citizens,
forced their way into the cathedral, arrested ten or twelve of the
rioters, and easily dispersed the remainder; while a gallows erected on
an eminence admonished the offenders of the fate that awaited them. The
facility with which the disorders were repressed by a few resolute men
naturally suggests the inference, that many of the citizens had too much
sympathy with the authors of the outrages to care to check them, still
less to bring the culprits to punishment. An orthodox chronicler of the
time vents his indignation against a people who were so much more ready
to stand by their hearths than by their altars.[814]

The fate of Antwerp had its effect on the country. The flames of
fanaticism, burning fiercer than ever, quickly spread over the northern,
as they had done over the western provinces. In Holland, Utrecht,
Friesland,--everywhere, in short, with a few exceptions on the southern
borders,--mobs rose against the churches. In some places, as Rotterda