On the other hand, the citizens of Valenciennes were depressed in equal measure with the exultation of their antagonists.  There was no more talk of seven sleepers now, no more lunettes stuck upon lances, to spy the coming forces of the enemy.  It was felt that the government was wide awake, and that the city would soon see the impending horrors without telescopes.  The siege was pressed more closely.  Noircarmes took up a commanding position at Saint Armand, by which he was enabled to cut off all communication between the city and the surrounding country.  All the villages in the neighborhood were pillaged; all the fields laid waste.  All the infamies which an insolent soldiery can inflict upon helpless peasantry were daily enacted.  Men and women who attempted any communication—­with the city, were murdered in cold blood by hundreds.  The villagers were plundered of their miserable possessions, children were stripped naked in the midst of winter for the sake of the rags which covered them; matrons and virgins were sold at public auction by the tap of drum; sick and wounded wretches were burned over slow fires, to afford amusement to the soldiers.  In brief, the whole unmitigated curse which military power inflamed by religious bigotry can embody, had descended upon the heads of these unfortunate provincials who had dared to worship God in Christian churches without a Roman ritual.

Meantime the city maintained, a stout heart still.  The whole population were arranged under different banners.  The rich and poor alike took arms to defend the walls which sheltered them.  The town paupers were enrolled in three companies, which bore the significant title of the “Tons-nulls” or the “Stark-nakeds,” and many was the fierce conflict delivered outside the gates by men, who, in the words of a Catholic then in the city, might rather be taken for “experienced veterans than for burghers and artisans.”  At the same time, to the honor of Valenciennes, it must be stated, upon the same incontestable authority, that not a Catholic in the city was injured or insulted.  The priests who had remained there were not allowed to say mass, but they never met with an opprobrious word or look from the people.

The inhabitants of the city called upon the confederates for assistance.  They also issued an address to the Knights of the Fleece; a paper which narrated the story of their wrongs in pathetic and startling language.  They appealed to those puissant and illustrious chevaliers to prevent the perpetration of the great wrong which was now impending over so many innocent heads.  “Wait not,” they said, “till the thunderbolt has fallen, till the deluge has overwhelmed us, till the fires already blazing have laid the land in coals and ashes, till no other course be possible, but to abandon the country in its desolation to foreign barbarity.  Let the cause of the oppressed come to your ears.  So shall your conscience become a shield of iron; so shall the happiness of a whole country witness before the angels, of your truth to his Majesty, in the cause of his true grandeur and glory.”