and lay dead around the battery, with their hammers and spikes in their hands.  The same spirit was daily manifested.  As the spring advanced, the kine went daily out of the gates to their peaceful pasture, notwithstanding all the turmoil within and around; nor was it possible for the Spaniards to capture a single one of these creatures, without paying at least a dozen soldiers as its price.  ‘These citizens,’ wrote Don Frederic, ‘do as much as the best soldiers in the world could do.’”

The whole story is too dreadful to be told; but events proved the implacable old soldier to be right.  Month after month passed, assault after assault was repulsed by the wretched but indomitable burghers; but time was all on the side of the enemy.  On July 12th, after the frustration again and again of hopes of relief from the Prince of Orange, whose plans were doomed to failure on every occasion, the city surrendered on the promise of complete forgiveness by Don Frederic.

The Don, however, was only a subordinate; the Duke of Alva had other views.  He quickly arrived on the scene, and as quickly his presence made itself felt.  “The garrison, during the siege, had been reduced from four thousand to eighteen hundred.  Of these the Germans, six hundred in number, were, by Alva’s order, dismissed, on a pledge to serve no more against the King.  All the rest of the garrison were immediately butchered, with at least as many citizens....  Five executioners, with their attendants, were kept constantly at work; and when at last they were exhausted with fatigue, or perhaps sickened with horror, three hundred wretches were tied two and two, back to back, and drowned in the Haarlem Lake.  At last, after twenty-three hundred human creatures had been murdered in cold blood, within a city where so many thousands had previously perished by violent or by lingering deaths; the blasphemous farce of a pardon was enacted.  Fifty-seven of the most prominent burghers of the place were, however, excepted from the act of amnesty, and taken into custody as security for the future good conduct of the other citizens.  Of these hostages some were soon executed, some died in prison, and all would have been eventually sacrificed, had not the naval defeat of Bossu soon afterwards enabled the Prince of Orange to rescue the remaining prisoners.  Ten thousand two hundred and fifty-six shots had been discharged against the walk during the siege.  Twelve thousand of the besieging army had died of wounds or disease during the seven months and two days between the investment and the surrender.  In the earlier part of August, after the executions had been satisfactorily accomplished, Don Frederic made his triumphal entry, and the first chapter in the invasion of Holland was closed.  Such was the memorable siege of Haarlem, an event in which we are called upon to wonder equally at human capacity to inflict and to endure misery.