f to the citadel. Maddened by this last
outrage, the father, who was the only man of the party left alive, rushed
upon the Spaniards. Wresting a sword from one of the crew, the old man
dealt with it so fiercely, that he stretched more than one enemy dead at
his feet, but it is needless to add that he was soon despatched.
Meantime, while the party were concluding the plunder of the mansion, the
bride was left in a lonely apartment of the fortress. Without wasting
time in fruitless lamentation, she resolved to quit the life which a few
hours had made so desolate. She had almost succeeded in hanging herself
with a massive gold chain which she wore, when her captor entered the
apartment. Inflamed, not with lust, but with avarice, excited not by her
charms, but by her jewelry; he rescued her from her perilous position. He
then took possession of her chain and the other trinkets with which her
wedding-dress was adorned, and caused her; to be entirely stripped of her
clothing. She was then scourged with rods till her beautiful body was
bathed in blood, and at last alone, naked, nearly mad, was sent back into
the city. Here the forlorn creature wandered up and down through the
blazing streets, among the heaps of dead and dying, till she was at last
put out of her misery by a gang of soldiers.

Such are a few isolated instances, accidentally preserved in their
details, of the general horrors inflicted on this occasion. Others
innumerable have sunk into oblivion. On the morning of the 5th of
November, Antwerp presented a ghastly sight. The magnificent marble
Town-house, celebrated as a "world's wonder," even in that age and
country, in which so much splendour was lavished on municipal palaces,
stood a blackened ruin--all but the walls destroyed, while its archives,
accounts, and other valuable contents, had perished. The more splendid
portion of the city had been consumed; at least five hundred palaces,
mostly of marble or hammered stone, being a smouldering mass of
destruction. The dead bodies of those fallen in the massacre were on
every side, in greatest profusion around the Place de Meer, among the
Gothic pillars of the Exchange, and in the streets near the Town-house.
The German soldiers lay in their armor, some with their heads burned from
their bodies, some with legs and arms consumed by the flames through
which they had fought. The Margrave Goswyn Verreyck, the burgomaster Van
der Meere, the magistrates Lancelot Van Ursele