temples casts contempt on their proscribed belief; every cross they set
up upon the highway, every image of the saints that they meet, is a
trophy erected over their own humiliation, and they all must be removed
by their avenging hands. Fanaticism suggests these detestable
proceedings, but base passions carry them into execution.


1566. The commencement of the attack on images took place in West
Flanders and Artois, in the districts between Lys and the sea. A
frantic herd of artisans, boatmen, and peasants, mixed with prostitutes,
beggars, vagabonds, and thieves, about three hundred in number,
furnished with clubs, axes, hammers, ladders, and cords (a few only
were provided with swords or fire arms), cast themselves, with fanatical
fury, into the villages and hamlets near St. Omer, and breaking open the
gates of such churches and cloisters as they find locked, overthrow
everywhere the altars, break to pieces the images of the saints, and
trample them under foot. With their excitement increased by its
indulgence, and reinforced by newcomers, they press on by the direct
road to Ypres, where they can count on the support of a strong body of
Calvinists. Unopposed, they break into the cathedral, and mounting on
ladders they hammer to pieces the pictures, hew down with axes the
pulpits and pews, despoil the altars of their ornaments, and steal the
holy vessels. This example was quickly followed in Menin, Comines,
Verrich, Lille, and Oudenard; in a few days the same fury spreads
through the whole of Flanders. At the very time when the first tidings
of this occurrence arrived Antwerp was swarming with a crowd of
houseless people, which the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin had
brought together in that city. Even the presence of the Prince of
Orange was hardly sufficient to restrain the licentious mob, who burned
to imitate the doings of their brethren in St. Omer; but an order from