m,
Dort, Haarlem, the magistrates were wary enough to avert the storm by
delivering up the images, or at least by removing them from the
buildings.[815] It was rare that any attempt was made at resistance. Yet
on one or two occasions this so far succeeded that a handful of troops
sufficed to rout the iconoclasts. At Anchyn, four hundred of the rabble
were left dead on the field. But the soldiers had no relish for their
duty, and on other occasions, when called on to perform it, refused to
bear arms against their countrymen.[816] The leaven of heresy was too
widely spread among the people.

Thus the work of plunder and devastation went on vigorously throughout
the land. Cathedral and chapel, monastery and nunnery, religious houses
of every description, even hospitals, were delivered up to the tender
mercies of the Reformers. The monks fled, leaving behind them treasures
of manuscripts and well-stored cellars, which latter the invaders soon
emptied of their contents, while they consigned the former to the
flames. The terrified nuns, escaping half naked, at dead of night, from
their convents, were too happy to find a retreat among their friends and
kinsmen in the city.[817] Neither monk nor nun ventured to go abroad in
the conventual garb. Priests might be sometimes seen hurrying away with
some relic or sacred treasure under their robes, which they were eager
to save from the spoilers. In the general sack not even the abode of the
dead was respected; and the sepulchres of the counts of Flanders were
violated, and laid open to the public gaze![818]

The deeds of violence perpetrated by the iconoclasts were accompanied by
such indignities as might express their contempt for the ancient faith.
They snatched the wafer, says an eye-witness, from the altar, and put it
into the mouth of a parrot. Some huddled the images of the saints
together, and set them on fire, or covered them with bits of armor, and,
shouting "_Vivent les Gueux!_" tilted rudely against them. Some put on
the vestments stolen from the churches, and ran about the streets with
them in mockery. Some basted the books with butter, that they might burn
the more briskly.[819] By the scholar, this last enormity will not be
held light among their transgressions. It answered their purpose, to
judge by the number of volumes that were consumed. Among the rest, the
great library of Vicogne, one of the noblest collections in the
Netherlands, perished in the flames kindled