as fast as made.  They brought bags of sand, blocks of stone, cart-loads of earth from every quarter, and they stripped the churches of all their statues, which they threw by heaps into the gaps.  They sought thus a more practical advantage from those sculptured saints than they could have gained by only imploring their interposition The fact, however, excited horror among the besiegers.  Men who were daily butchering their fellow-beings, and hanging their prisoners in cold blood, affected to shudder at the enormity of the offence thus exercised against graven images.

“After three days’ cannonade, the assault was ordered, Don Frederic only intending a rapid massacre, to crown his achievements at Zutphen and Naarden.  The place, he thought, would fall in a week, and after another week of sacking, killing, and ravishing, he might sweep on to ‘pastures new’ until Holland was overwhelmed.  Romero advanced to the breach, followed by a numerous storming party, but met with a resistance which astonished the Spaniards.  The church bells rang the alarm throughout the city, and the whole population swarmed to the walls.  The besiegers were encountered not only with sword and musket, but with every implement which the burghers’ hands could find.  Heavy stones, boiling oil, live coals, were hurled upon the heads of the soldiers; hoops, smeared with pitch and set on fire, were dexterously thrown upon their necks.  Even Spanish courage and Spanish ferocity were obliged to shrink before the steady determination of a whole population animated by a single spirit.  Romero lost an eye in the conflict, many officers were killed and wounded, and three or four hundred soldiers left dead in the breach, while only three or four of the townsmen lost their lives.  The signal of recall was reluctantly given, and the Spaniards abandoned the assault.

“Don Frederic was now aware that Haarlem would not fall at his feet at the first sound of his trumpet.  It was obvious that a siege must precede the massacre.  He gave orders, therefore, that the ravelin should be undermined, and doubted not that, with a few days’ delay, the place would be in his hands.”

The Prince of Orange then made, from Sassenheim, another attempt to relieve the town, sending 2,000 men.  But a fog falling, they lost their way and fell into the enemy’s hands.  “De Koning,” says Motley, “second in command, was among the prisoners.  The Spaniards cut off his head and threw it over the walls into the city, with this inscription:  ’This is the head of Captain De Koning, who is on his way with reinforcements for the good city of Haarlem’.  The citizens retorted with a practical jest, which was still more barbarous.  They cut off the heads of eleven prisoners and put them into a barrel, which they threw into the Spanish camp.  A label upon the barrel contained these words:  ’Deliver these ten heads to Duke Alva in payment of his tenpenny tax, with one additional head for interest’.”