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