Three days long the horrible scene continued, one day for the benefit of the Spaniards, two more for that of the Walloons and Germans.  All the churches, monasteries, religious houses of every kind, were completely sacked.  Every valuable article which they contained, the ornaments of altars, the reliquaries, chalices, embroidered curtains, and carpets of velvet or damask, the golden robes of the priests, the repositories of the host, the precious vessels of chrism and extreme unction, the rich clothing and jewellery adorning the effigies of the Holy Virgin, all were indiscriminately rifled by the Spanish soldiers.  The holy wafers were trampled underfoot, the sacramental wine was poured upon the ground, and, in brief, all the horrors which had been committed by the iconoclasts in their wildest moments, and for a thousandth part of which enormities heretics had been burned in droves, were now repeated in Mechlin by the especial soldiers of Christ, by Roman Catholics who had been sent to the Netherlands to avenge the insults offered to the Roman Catholic faith.  The motive, too, which inspired the sacrilegious crew was not fanaticism, but the, desire of plunder.  The property of Romanists was taken as freely as that of Calvinists, of which sect there were; indeed, but few in the archiepiscopal city.  Cardinal Granvelle’s house was rifled.  The pauper funds deposited in the convents were not respected.  The beds were taken from beneath sick and dying women, whether lady abbess or hospital patient, that the sacking might be torn to pieces in search of hidden treasure.

The iconoclasts of 1566 had destroyed millions of property for the sake of an idea, but they had appropriated nothing.  Moreover, they had scarcely injured a human being; confining their wrath to graven images.  The Spaniards at Mechlin spared neither man nor woman.  The murders and outrages would be incredible, were they not attested by most respectable Catholic witnesses.  Men were butchered in their houses, in the streets, at the altars.  Women were violated by hundreds in churches and in grave-yards.  Moreover, the deed had been as deliberately arranged as it was thoroughly performed.  It was sanctioned by the highest authority.  Don Frederic, Son of Alva, and General Noircarmes were both present at the scene, and applications were in vain made to them that the havoc might be stayed.  “They were seen whispering to each other in the ear on their arrival,” says an eye-witness and a Catholic, “and it is well known that the affair had been resolved upon the preceding day.  The two continued together as long as they remained in the city.”  The work was, in truth, fully accomplished.  The ultra-Catholic, Jean Richardot, member of the Grand Council, and nephew of the Bishop of Arras, informed the State Council that the sack of Mechlin had been so horrible that the poor and unfortunate mothers had not a single morsel of bread to put in the mouths of their children, who were dying before their eyes—­so insane and cruel had been the avarice of the plunderers.  “He could say more,” he added, “if his hair did not stand on end, not only at recounting, but even at remembering the scene.”