to the little force.  Even Spanish bravery recoiled at so desperate an undertaking, but unscrupulous ferocity supplied an expedient where courage was at fault.  There were few fighting men present among the population of Wieck, but there were many females.  Each soldier was commanded to seize a woman, and, placing her before his own body, to advance across the bridge.  The column, thus bucklered, to the shame of Spanish chivalry, by female bosoms, moved in good order toward the battery.  The soldiers leveled their muskets with steady aim over the shoulders or under the arms of the women whom they thus held before them.  On the other hand, the citizens dared not discharge their cannon at their own townswomen, among whose numbers many recognized mothers, sisters, or wives.  The battery was soon taken, while at the same time Alonzj Vargas, who had effected his entrance from the land side by burning down the Brussels gate, now entered the city at the head of a band of cavalry.  Maestricht was recovered, and an indiscriminate slaughter instantly avenged its temporary loss.  The plundering, stabbing, drowning, burning, ravishing; were so dreadful that, in the words of a cotemporary historian, “the burghers who had escaped the fight had reason to think themselves less fortunate than those who had died with arms in their hands.”

This was the lot of Maestricht on the 20th of October.  It was instinctively felt to be the precursor of fresh disasters.  Vague, incoherent, but widely disseminated rumors had long pointed to Antwerp and its dangerous situation.  The Spaniards, foiled in their views upon Brussels, had recently avowed an intention of avenging themselves in the commercial capital.  They had waited long enough, and accumulated strength enough.  Such a trifling city as Alost could no longer content their cupidity, but in Antwerp there was gold enough for the gathering.  There was reason for the fears of the inhabitants, for the greedy longing of their enemy.  Probably no city in Christendom could at that day vie with Antwerp in wealth and splendor.  Its merchants lived in regal pomp and luxury.  In its numerous, massive warehouses were the treasures of every clime.  Still serving as the main entrepot of the world’s traffic, the Brabantine capital was the centre of that commercial system which was soon to be superseded by a larger international life.  In the midst of the miseries which had so long been raining upon the Netherlands, the stately and egotistical city seemed to have taken stronger root and to flourish more freshly than ever.  It was not wonderful that its palaces and its magazines, glittering with splendor and bursting with treasure, should arouse the avidity of a reckless and famishing soldiery.  Had not a handful of warriors of their own race rifled the golden Indies?  Had not their fathers, few in number, strong in courage and discipline, revelled in the plunder of a new world?  Here were the Indies in a single city.  Here were gold and silver, pearls and diamonds, ready and portable; the precious fruit dropping, ripened, from the bough.  Was it to be tolerated that base, pacific burghers should monopolize the treasure by which a band of heroes might be enriched?