In this Spanish Fury many more were massacred in Antwerp than in the Saint Bartholomew at Paris.  Almost as many living human beings were dashed out of existence now as there had been statues destroyed in the memorable image-breaking of Antwerp, ten years before, an event which had sent such a thrill of horror through the heart of Catholic Christendom.  Yet the Netherlanders and the Protestants of Europe may be forgiven, if they regarded this massacre of their brethren with as much execration as had been bestowed upon that fury against stocks and stones.  At least, the image-breakers, had been actuated by an idea, and their hands were polluted neither with blood nor rapine.  Perhaps the Spaniards had been. governed equally by religious fanaticism.—­Might not they believe they were meriting well of their Mother Church while they were thus disencumbering infidels of their wealth and earth of its infidels?  Had not the Pope and his cardinals gone to church in solemn procession, to render thanks unto God for the massacre of Paris?  Had not cannon thundered and beacons blazed to commemorate that auspicious event?  Why should not the Antwerp executioners claim equal commendation?  Even if in their delirium they had confounded friend with foe, Catholic with Calvinist, and church property with lay, could they not point to an equal number of dead bodies, and to an incredibly superior amount of plunder?

Marvellously few Spaniards were slain in these eventful days.  Two hundred killed is the largest number stated.  The discrepancy seems monstrous, but it is hardly more than often existed between the losses inflicted and sustained by the Spaniards in such combats.  Their prowess was equal to their ferocity, and this was enough to make them seem endowed with preterhuman powers.  When it is remembered, also, that the burghers were insufficiently armed, that many of their defenders turned against them, that many thousands fled in the first moments of the encounter—­and when the effect of a sudden and awful panic is duly considered, the discrepancy between the number of killed on the two sides will not seem so astonishing.

A few officers of distinction were taken, alive and carried to the castle.  Among these were the Seigneur de Capres and young Count Egmont.  The councillor Jerome de Roda was lounging on a chair in an open gallery when these two gentlemen were brought before him, and Capres was base enough to make a low obeisance to the man who claimed to represent the whole government of his Majesty.  The worthy successor of Vargas replied to his captive’s greeting by a “kick in his stomach,” adding, with a brutality which his prototype might have envied, “Ah puto tradidor,—­whoreson traitor, let me have no salutations from such as you.”  Young Egmont, who had been captured, fighting bravely at the head of coward troops, by Julian Romero, who nine years before had stood on his father’s scaffold, regarded this brutal scene with haughty