The invaders had been forced from the Bourse, while another portion of them had penetrated as far as the Market-place.  The resistance which they encountered became every instant more formidable, and Fervacques, a leading French officer, who was captured on the occasion, acknowledged that no regular troops could have fought more bravely than did these stalwart burghers.  Women and children mounted to roof and window, whence they hurled, not only tiles and chimney pots, but tables, ponderous chairs, and other bulky articles, upon the heads of the assailants, while such citizens as had used all their bullets, loaded their pieces with the silver buttons from their doublets, or twisted gold and silver coins with their teeth into ammunition.  With a population so resolute, the four thousand invaders, however audacious, soon found themselves swallowed up.  The city had closed over them like water, and within an hour nearly a third of their whole number had been slain.  Very few of the burghers had perished, and fresh numbers were constantly advancing to the attack.  The Frenchmen, blinded, staggering, beaten, attempted to retreat.  Many threw themselves from the fortifications into the moat.  The rest of the survivors struggled through the streets—­falling in large numbers at every step-towards the point at which they had so lately entered the city.  Here at the Kipdorp gate was a ghastly spectacle, the slain being piled up in the narrow passage full ten feet high, while some of the heap, not quite dead, were striving to extricate a hand or foot, and others feebly thrust forth their heads to gain a mouthful of air.

From the outside, some of Anjou’s officers were attempting to climb over this mass of bodies in order to enter the city; from the interior, the baffled and fugitive remnant of their comrades were attempting to force their passage through the same horrible barrier; while many dropped at, every instant upon the heap of slain, under the blows of the unrelenting burghers.  On the other hand, Count Rochepot himself, to whom the principal command of the enterprise had been entrusted by Anjou, stood directly in the path of his fugitive soldiers, not only bitterly upbraiding them with their cowardice, but actually slaying ten or twelve of them with his own hands, as the most effectual mode of preventing their retreat.  Hardly an hour had elapsed from the time when the Duke of Anjou first rode out of the Kipdorp gate, before nearly the whole of the force which he had sent to accomplish his base design was either dead or captive.  Two hundred and fifty nobles of high rank and illustrious name were killed; recognized at once as they lay in the streets by their magnificent costume.  A larger number of the gallant chivalry of France had been sacrificed—­as Anjou confessed—­in this treacherous and most shameful enterprise, than had often fallen upon noble and honorable fields.  Nearly two thousand of the rank and file had perished, and the rest were prisoners.  It was at first asserted that exactly fifteen hundred and eighty-three Frenchmen had fallen, but this was only because this number happened to be the date of the year, to which the lovers of marvellous coincidences struggled very hard to make the returns of the dead correspond.  Less than one hundred burghers lost their lives.