Meantime, the guards were strengthened and commanded to be more than usually watchful.  The injunction had a remarkable effect.  At the dead of night, a soldier of the watch was going his rounds on the outside of the breastwork, listening, if perchance he might catch, as was not unusual, a portion of the conversation among the beleaguered burghers within.  Prying about on every side, he at last discovered a chink in the wall, the result, doubtless, of the last cannonade, and hitherto overlooked.  He enlarged the gap with his fingers, and finally made an opening wide enough to admit his person.  He crept boldly through, and looked around in the clear starlight.  The sentinels were all slumbering at their posts.  He advanced stealthily in the dusky streets.  Not a watchman was going his rounds.  Soldiers, burghers, children, women, exhausted by incessant fatigue, were all asleep.  Not a footfall was heard; not a whisper broke the silence; it seemed a city of the dead.  The soldier crept back through the crevice, and hastened to apprise his superiors of his adventure.

Alexander, forthwith instructed as to the condition of the city, at once ordered the assault, and the last wall was suddenly stormed before the morning broke.  The soldiers forced their way through the breach or sprang over the breastwork, and surprised at last—­in its sleep—­the city which had so long and vigorously defended itself.  The burghers, startled from their slumber, bewildered, unprepared, found themselves engaged in unequal conflict with alert and savage foes.  The battle, as usual when Netherland towns were surprised by Philip’s soldiers, soon changed to a massacre.  The townspeople rushed hither and thither, but there was neither escape, nor means of resisting an enemy who now poured into the town by thousands upon thousands.  An indiscriminate slaughter succeeded:  Women, old men, and children, had all been combatants; and all, therefore, had incurred the vengeance of the conquerors.  A cry of agony arose which was distinctly heard at the distance of a league.  Mothers took their infants in their arms, and threw themselves by hundreds into the Meuse—­and against women the blood-thirst of the assailants was especially directed.  Females who had fought daily in the trenches, who had delved in mines and mustered on the battlements, had unsexed themselves in the opinion of those whose comrades they had helped to destroy.  It was nothing that they had laid aside the weakness of women in order to defend all that was holy and dear to them on earth.  It was sufficient that many a Spanish, Burgundian, or Italian mercenary had died by their hands.  Women were pursued from house to house, and hurled from roof and window.  They were hunted into the river; they were torn limb from limb in the streets.  Men and children fared no better; but the heart sickens at the oft-repeated tale.  Horrors, alas, were commonplaces in the Netherlands.  Cruelty too monstrous for description, too vast to be believed by a mind not familiar with the outrages practised by the soldiers of Spain and Italy upon their heretic fellow-creatures, were now committed afresh in the streets of Maestricht.