first blast of
indignation was against the commandant of the place. Alexander, who had
admired, his courage, was not unfavourably disposed towards him, but
Archbishop Ernest vehemently, demanded his immediate death, as a personal
favour to himself. As the churchman was nominally sovereign of the city
although in reality a beggarly dependant on Philip's alms, Farnese felt
bound to comply. The manner in which it was at first supposed that the
Bishop's Christian request had; been complied, with, sent a shudder
through every-heart in the Netherlands. "They took Kloet, wounded as he
was," said Lord North, "and first strangled, him, then smeared him with
pitch, and burnt him with gunpowder; thus, with their holiness, they,
made a tragical end of an heroical service. It is wondered that the
Prince would suffer so great an outrage to be done to so noble a soldier,
who did but his duty."

But this was an error. A Jesuit priest was sent to the house of the
commandant, for a humane effort was thought necessary in order to save
the soul of the man whose life was forfeited for the crime of defending
his city. The culprit was found lying in bed. His wife, a woman of
remarkable beauty, with her sister, was in attendance upon him. The
spectacle of those two fair women, nursing a wounded soldier fallen upon
the field of honour, might have softened devils with sympathy. But the
Jesuit was closely followed by a band of soldiers, who, notwithstanding
the supplications of the women, and the demand of Kloet to be indulged
with a soldier's death, tied a rope round the commandant's necks dragged
him from his bed, and hanged him from his own window. The Calvinist
clergyman, Fosserus of Oppenheim, the deacons of the congregation, two
military officers, and--said Parma--"forty other rascals," were murdered
in the same way at the same time. The bodies remained at the window till
they were devoured by the flames, which soon consumed the house. For a
vast conflagration, caused none knew whether by accident, by the despair
of the inhabitants; by the previous, arrangements of the commandant, by
the latest-arrived bands of the besiegers enraged that the Italians and
Spaniards had been beforehand with them in the spoils, or--as Farnese
more maturely believed--by the special agency of the Almighty, offended
with the burning of Saint Quirinus,--now came to complete the horror of
the scene. Three-quarters of the town were at once in a blaze. The
churches,