To give these guests a hospitable reception, all the housewives of the city at once set about preparations for a sumptuous feast, to which the Spaniards did ample justice, while the colonel and his officers were entertained by Senator Gerrit at his own house.  As soon as this conviviality had come to an end, Romero, accompanied by his host, walked into the square.  The great bell had been meantime ringing, and the citizens had been summoned to assemble in the Gast Huis Church, then used as a town hall.  In the course of a few minutes five hundred had entered the building, and stood quietly awaiting whatever measures might be offered for their deliberation.  Suddenly a priest, who had been pacing to and fro before the church door, entered the building, and bade them all prepare for death; but the announcement, the preparation, and the 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 Hortensius was spared, out of regard to his learning and genius, but he hardly could thank his foes for