The attack had been so unexpected, in consequence of the credence that had been rendered by Orange and the magistracy to the solemn protestations of the Duke, that it had been naturally out of any one’s power to prevent the catastrophe.  The Prince was lodged in apart of the town remote from the original scene of action, and it does not appear that information had reached him that anything unusual was occurring, until the affair was approaching its termination.  Then there was little for him to do.  He hastened, however, to the scene, and mounting the ramparts, persuaded the citizens to cease cannonading the discomfited and retiring foe.  He felt the full gravity of the situation, and the necessity of diminishing the rancor of the inhabitants against their treacherous allies, if such a result were yet possible.  The burghers had done their duty, and it certainly would have been neither in his power nor his inclination to protect the French marauders from expulsion and castigation.

Such was the termination of the French Fury, and it seems sufficiently strange that it should have been so much less disastrous to Antwerp than was the Spanish Fury of 1576, to which men could still scarcely allude without a shudder.  One would have thought the French more likely to prove successful in their enterprise than the Spaniards in theirs.  The Spaniards were enemies against whom the city had long been on its guard.  The French were friends in whose sincerity a somewhat shaken confidence had just been restored.  When the Spanish attack was made, a large force of defenders was drawn up in battle array behind freshly strengthened fortifications.  When the French entered at leisure through a scarcely guarded gate, the whole population and garrison of the town were quietly eating their dinners.  The numbers of the invading forces on the two occasions did not materially differ; but at the time of the French Fury there was not a large force of regular troops under veteran generals to resist the attack.  Perhaps this was the main reason for the result, which seems at first almost inexplicable.  For protection against the Spanish invasion, the burghers relied on mercenaries, some of whom proved treacherous, while the rest became panic-struck.  On the present occasion the burghers relied on themselves.  Moreover, the French committed the great error of despising their enemy.  Recollecting the ease with which the Spaniards had ravished the city, they believed that they had nothing to do but to enter and take possession.  Instead of repressing their greediness, as the Spaniards had done, until they had overcome resistance, they dispersed almost immediately into by-streets, and entered warehouses to search for plunder.  They seemed actuated by a fear that they should not have time to rifle the city before additional troops should be sent by Anjou to share in the spoil.  They were less used to the sacking of Netherland cities than were the Spaniards, whom long practice had made perfect in the art of