Mechlin was selected for an example and a sacrifice.

There were heavy arrears due to the Spanish troops. To indemnify them,
and to make good his blasphemous prophecy of Divine chastisement for
its past misdeeds, Alva now abandoned this town to the licence of his
soldiery. By his command Don Frederic advanced to the gates and demanded
its surrender. He was answered by a few shots from the garrison. Those
cowardly troops, however, having thus plunged the city still more deeply
into the disgrace which, in Alva's eyes, they had incurred by receiving
rebels within their walls after having but just before refused admittance
to the Spanish forces, decamped during the night, and left the place
defenceless.

Early next morning there issued from the gates a solemn procession of
priests, with banner and crozier, followed by a long and suppliant throng
of citizens, who attempted by this demonstration to avert the wrath of
the victor. While the penitent psalms were resounding, the soldiers were
busily engaged in heaping dried branches and rubbish into the moat.
Before the religious exercises were concluded, thousands had forced the
gates or climbed the walls; and entered the city with a celerity which
only the hope of rapine could inspire. The sack instantly commenced.
The property of friend and foe, of Papist and Calvinist, was
indiscriminately rifled. Everything was dismantled and destroyed.
"Hardly a nail," said a Spaniard, writing soon afterwards from Brussels,
"was left standing in the walls." The troops seemed to imagine
themselves in a Turkish town, and wreaked the Divine vengeance which
Alva had denounced upon the city with an energy which met with his
fervent applause.

Three days long the horrible scene continued, one day for the benefit of