death, were simultaneous. The door was flung open, and a band of armed
Spaniards rushed across the sacred threshold. They fired a single volley
upon the defenceless herd, and then sprang in upon them with sword and
dagger. A yell of despair arose as the miserable victims saw how
hopelessly they were engaged, and beheld the ferocious faces of their
butchers. The carnage within that narrow apace was compact and rapid.
Within a few minutes all were despatched, and among them Senator Gerrit,
from whose table the Spanish commander had but just risen. The church
was then set on fire, and the dead and dying were consumed to ashes
together.

Inflamed but not satiated, the Spaniards then rushed into the streets,
thirsty for fresh horrors. The houses were all rifled of their contents,
and men were forced to carry the booty to the camp, who were then struck
dead as their reward. The town was then fired in every direction, that
the skulking citizens might be forced from their hiding-places. As fast
as they came forth they were put to death by their impatient foes. Some
were pierced with rapiers, some were chopped to pieces with axes, some
were surrounded in the blazing streets by troops of laughing soldiers,
intoxicated, not with wine but with blood, who tossed them to and fro
with their lances, and derived a wild amusement from their dying agonies.
Those who attempted resistance were crimped alive like fishes, and left
to gasp themselves to death in lingering torture. The soldiers becoming
more and more insane, as the foul work went on, opened the veins of some
of their victims, and drank their blood as if it were wine. Some of 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