ish by a more lingering death. Most
of them soon died, but twenty, who happened to be wealthy, succeeded,
after enduring much torture, in purchasing their lives of their inhuman
persecutors. The principal burgomaster, Heinrich Lambertszoon, was
less fortunate. Known to be affluent, he was tortured by exposing the
soles of his feet to a fire until they were almost consumed. On promise
that his life should be spared he then agreed to pay a heavy ransom;
but hardly had he furnished the stipulated sum when, by express
order of Don Frederic himself, he was hanged in his own doorway,
and his dissevered limbs afterwards nailed to the gates of the city.

"Nearly all the inhabitants of Naarden, soldiers and citizens, were
thus destroyed; and now Don Frederic issued peremptory orders that no
one, on pain of death, should give lodging or food to any fugitive. He
likewise forbade to the dead all that could now be forbidden them--a
grave. Three weeks long did these unburied bodies pollute the streets,
nor could the few wretched women who still cowered within such houses
as had escaped the flames ever move from their lurking-places without
treading upon the festering remains of what had been their husbands,
their fathers, or their brethren. Such was the express command of him
whom the flatterers called the 'most divine genius ever known'. Shortly
afterwards came an order to dismantle the fortifications, which had
certainly proved sufficiently feeble in the hour of need, and to raze
what was left of the city from the surface of the earth. The work was
faithfully accomplished, and for a long time Naarden ceased to exist."

The Naarden of to-day sprang from the ruins. Mendoza's comment upon
the siege ran thus: "The sack of Naarden was a chastisement which
must be believed to have taken place by express permission of a
Divine Providence; a punishment for having been the first of the
Holland towns in which heresy built its nest, whence it has taken
flight to all the neighbouring cities". None the less, "the hearts
of the Hollanders," says Motley, "were rather steeled to resistance
than awed into submission by the fate of Naarden"; as Don Frederic
found when he passed on to besiege Haarlem and later Alkmaar.

To Muiderburg, between Naarden and Muiden, I have not been, and
therefore with the more readiness quote my indispensable author:--

In summer is Muiderberg by its situation at the Zuiderzee a favourite
little spot and very recommen