This exultation never deserted these courageous enthusiasts.  They received their condemnation to death “as if it had been an invitation to a marriage feast.”  They encouraged the friends who crowded their path to the scaffold with exhortations to remain true in the Reformed faith.  La Grange, standing upon the ladder, proclaimed with a loud voice, that he was slain for having preached the pure word of God to a Christian people in a Christian land.  De Bray, under the same gibbet; testified stoutly that he, too, had committed that offence alone.  He warned his friends to obey the magistrates, and all others in authority, except in matters of conscience; to abstain from sedition; but to obey the will of God.  The executioner threw him from the ladder while he was yet speaking.  So ended the lives of two eloquent, learned, and highly-gifted divines.

Many hundreds of victims were sacrificed in the unfortunate city.  “There were a great many other citizens strangled or beheaded,” says an aristocratic Catholic historian of the time, “but they were mostly personages of little quality, whose names are quite unknown to me.”—­[Pontus Payen]—­The franchises of the city were all revoked.  There was a prodigious amount of property confiscated to the benefit of Noircarmes and the rest of the “Seven Sleepers.”  Many Calvinists were burned, others were hanged.  “For—­two whole years,” says another Catholic, who was a citizen of Valenciennes at the time, “there was, scarcely a week in which several citizens were not executed and often a great number were despatched at a time.  All this gave so much alarm to the good and innocent, that many quitted the city as fast as they could.”  If the good and innocent happened to be rich, they might be sure that Noircarmes would deem that a crime for which no goodness and innocence could atone.

Upon the fate of Valenciennes had depended, as if by common agreement, the whole destiny of the anti-Catholic party.  “People had learned at last,” says another Walloon, “that the King had long arms, and that he had not been enlisting soldiers to string beads.  So they drew in their horns and their evil tempers, meaning to put them forth again, should the government not succeed at the siege of Valenciennes.”  The government had succeeded, however, and the consternation was extreme, the general submission immediate and even abject.  “The capture of Valenciennes,” wrote Noircarmes to Granvelle, “has worked a miracle.  The other cities all come forth to meet me, putting the rope around their own necks.”  No opposition was offered any where.  Tournay had been crushed; Valenciennes, Bois le Duc, and all other important places, accepted their garrisons without a murmur.  Even Antwerp had made its last struggle, and as soon as the back of Orange was turned, knelt down in the dust to receive its bridle.  The Prince had been able, by his courage and wisdom, to avert a sanguinary conflict within its walls, but his personal presence alone could guarantee any thing like religious liberty for the inhabitants, now that the rest of the country was subdued.  On the 26th April, sixteen companies of infantry, under Count Mansfeld, entered the gates.  On the 28th the Duchess made a visit to the city, where she was received with respect, but where her eyes were shocked by that which she termed the “abominable, sad, and hideous spectacle of the desolated churches.”