Dourlans, were the leaders of the little party, and while they were busily occupied in putting the soldiers of the watch, thus taken unawares, to death, the master-spirit of the whole adventure suddenly made his appearance and entered the city at the head of fifteen hundred men.  This was an extremely small, yellow, dried up, energetic Spanish captain, with a long red beard, Hernan Tello de Porto Carrero by came, governor of the neighbouring city of Dourlens, who had conceived this plan for obtaining possession of Amiens.  Having sent these disguised soldiers on before him, he had passed the night with his men in ambush until the signal should sound.  The burghers of the town were mostly in church; none were dreaming of an attack, as men rarely do—­for otherwise how should they ever be surprised—­and in half an hour Amiens was the property of Philip of Spain.  There were not very many lives lost, for the resistance was small, but great numbers were tortured for ransom and few women escaped outrage.  The sack was famous, for the city was rich and the captors were few in number, so that each soldier had two or three houses to plunder for his own profit.

When the work was done, the faubourgs were all destroyed, for it was the intention of the conquerors to occupy the place, which would be a most convenient basis of operations for any attack upon Paris, and it was desirable to contract the limits to be defended.  Fifteen hundred houses, many of them beautiful villas surrounded with orchards and pleasure gardens,—­were soon in flames, and afterwards razed to the ground.  The governor of the place, Count St. Pol, managed to effect his escape.  His place was now supplied by the Marquis of Montenegro, an Italian in the service of the Spanish king.  Such was the fate of Amiens in the month of March, 1597; such the result of the refusal by the citizens to accept the garrison urged upon them by Henry.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the consternation produced. throughout France by this astounding and altogether unlooked for event.  “It seemed,” said President De Thou, “as if it had extinguished in a moment the royal majesty and the French name.”  A few nights later than the date of this occurrence, Maximilian de Bethune (afterwards Duke of Sully, but then called Marquis de Rosny) was asleep in his bed in Paris.  He had returned, at past two o’clock in the morning, from a magnificent ball given by the Constable of France.  The capital had been uncommonly brilliant during the winter with banquets and dances, tourneys and masquerades, as if to cast a lurid glare over the unutterable misery of the people and the complete desolation of the country; but this entertainment—­given by Montmorency in honour of a fair dame with whom he supposed himself desperately in love, the young bride of a very ancient courtier—­surpassed in splendour every festival that had been heard of for years.  De Bethune had hardly lost himself in slumber when he was startled by Beringen, who, on drawing his curtains in this dead hour of the night, presented such a ghastly visage that the faithful friend of Henry instantly imagined some personal disaster to his well-beloved sovereign.  “Is the King dead?” he cried.