en with
sledge-hammers, hewn with axes, trampled, torn; and beaten into shreds. A
troop of harlots, snatching waxen tapers from the altars, stood around
the destroyers and lighted them at their work. Nothing escaped their
omnivorous rage. They desecrated seventy chapels, forced open all the
chests of treasure, covered their own squalid attire with the gorgeous
robes of the ecclesiastics, broke the sacred bread, poured out the
sacramental wine into golden chalices, quaffing huge draughts to the
beggars' health; burned all the splendid missals and manuscripts, and
smeared their shoes with the sacred oil, with which kings and prelates
had been anointed. It seemed that each of these malicious creatures must
have been endowed with the strength of a hundred giants. How else, in the
few brief hours of a midsummer night, could such a monstrous desecration
have been accomplished by a troop which, according to all accounts, was
not more than one hundred in number. There was a multitude of spectators,
as upon all such occasions, but the actual spoilers were very few.

The noblest and richest temple of the Netherlands was a wreck, but the
fury of the spoilers was excited, not appeased. Each seizing a burning
torch, the whole herd rushed from the cathedral, and swept howling
through the streets. "Long live the beggars!" resounded through the
sultry midnight air, as the ravenous pack flew to and fro, smiting every
image of the Virgin, every crucifix, every sculptured saint, every
Catholic symbol which they met with upon their path. All night long, they
roamed from one sacred edifice to another, thoroughly destroying as they
went. Before morning they had sacked thirty churches within the city
walls. They entered the monasteries, burned their invaluable libraries,
destroyed their altars, statues, pictures, and descending into the
cellars, broached every cask which they found there, pouring out in one
great flood all the ancient wine and ale with which those holy men had
been wont to solace their retirement from generation to generation. They
invaded the nunneries, whence the occupants, panic-stricken, fled for
refuge to the houses of their friends and kindred. The streets were
filled with monks and nuns, running this way and that, shrieking and
fluttering, to escape the claws of these fiendish Calvinists. The terror
was imaginary, for not the least remarkable feature in these transactions
was, that neither insult nor injury was offered