the
burghers were for a time spared, that they might witness the violation of
their wives and daughters, and were then butchered in company with these
still more unfortunate victims. Miracles of brutality were accomplished.
Neither church nor hearth was sacred: Men were slain, women outraged at
the altars, in the streets, in their blazing homes. The life of Lambert
Hortensius was spared, out of regard to his learning and genius, but he
hardly could thank his foes for the boon, for they struck his only son
dead, and tore his heart out before his father's eyes. Hardly any man or
woman survived, except by accident. A body of some hundred burghers made
their escape across the snow into the open country. They were, however,
overtaken, stripped stark naked, and hung upon the trees by the feet, to
freeze, or to perish 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 wave 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 longtime Naarden ceased to exist.

Alva wrot