"THE SPANISH FURY"[28]
(1576)
Meantime, while the short November day was fast declining, the combat
still raged in the interior of the city (Antwerp). Various currents of
conflict, forcing their separate way through many streets, had at last
mingled in the Grande Place. Around this irregular, not very spacious
square, stood the gorgeous Hotel de Ville, and the tall, many-storied,
fantastically gabled, richly decorated palaces of the guilds. Here a
long struggle took place. It was terminated for a time by the cavalry
of Vargas, who, arriving through the streets of Saint Joris,
accompanied by the traitor Van Ende, charged decisively into the
melee. The masses were broken, but multitudes of armed men found
refuge in the buildings, and every house became a fortress. From every
window and balcony a hot fire was poured into the square, as, pent in
a corner, the burghers stood at last at bay. It was difficult to carry
the houses by storm, but they were soon set on fire. A large number of
sutlers and other varlets had accompanied the Spaniards from the
citadel, bringing torches and kindling materials for the express
purpose of firing the town. With great dexterity, these means were now
applied, and in a brief interval the city hall and other edifices on
the square were in flames. The conflagration spread with rapidity,
house after house, street after street, taking fire. Nearly a thousand
buildings, in the most splendid and wealthy quarter of the city, were
soon in a blaze, and multitudes of human beings were burned with them.
In the city hall many were consumed, while others leapt from the
windows to renew the combat below. The many tortuous streets which led
down a slight descent from the rear of the town-house to the quays
were all one vast conflagration. On the other side, the magnificent
cathedral, separated from the Grande Place by a single row of
buildings, was lighted up, but not attacked by the flames. The tall
spire cast its gigantic shadow across the last desperate conflict. In
the street called the Canal au Sucre, immediately behind the
town-house, there was a fierce struggle, a horrible massacre. A crowd
of burghers, grave magistrates, and such of the German soldiers as
remained alive still confronted the ferocious Spaniards. There, amid
the flaming desolation, Goswyn Verreyck, the heroic margrave of the
city, fought with the energy of hatred and despair. The burgomaster
Van der Meere lay dead at his feet; senators, soldiers, citizens fell
fast around him, and he sank at last upon a heap of slain. With him
effectual resistance ended. The remaining combatants were butchered,
or were slowly forced downward to perish in the Scheld. Women,
children, old men were killed in countless numbers, and still, through
all this havoc, directly over the heads of the struggling throng,
suspended in mid-air above the din and smoke of the conflict, there
sounded, every half-quarter of every hour, as if in gentle mockery,
from the belfry of the cathedral, the tender and melodious chimes.
[Footnote 28: From Part IV of Chapter V of "The Rise of the Dutch
Republic." Published by Harper & Brothers. The name "Spanish Fury" was
given to the sack of Antwerp by the Spaniards.]
Never was there a more monstrous massacre, even in the blood-stained
history of the Netherlands. It was estimated that, in the course of
this and the two following days, not less than eight thousand human
beings were murdered. The Spaniards seemed to cast off even the vizard
of humanity. Hell seemed emptied of its fiends. Night fell upon the
scene before the soldiers were masters of the city; but worse horrors
began after the contest was ended. This army of brigands had come
thither with a definite, practical purpose, for it was not
blood-thirst, nor lust, nor revenge, which had impelled them, but it
was avarice, greediness for gold. For gold they had waded through all
this blood and fire. Never had men more simplicity of purpose, more
directness in its execution. They had conquered their India at last;
its golden mines lay all before them, and every sword should open a
shaft. Riot and rape might be deferred; even murder, tho congenial to
their taste, was only subsidiary to their business. They had come to
take possession of the city's wealth, and they set themselves
faithfully to accomplish their task. For gold, infants were dashed out
of existence in their mothers' arms; for gold, parents were tortured
in their children's presence; for gold, brides were scourged to death
before their husbands' eyes. Wherever treasure was suspected, every
expedient which ingenuity, sharpened by greediness, could suggest, was
employed to extort it from its possessors. The fire, spreading more
extensively and more rapidly than had been desired through the
wealthiest quarter of the city, had unfortunately devoured a vast
amount of property. Six millions, at least, had thus been swallowed; a
destruction by which no one had profited. There was, however, much
left. The strong boxes of the merchants, the gold, silver, and
precious jewelry, the velvets, satins, brocades, laces, and similar
well concentrated and portable plunder, were rapidly appropriated. So
far the course was plain and easy, but in private houses it was more
difficult. The cash, plate, and other valuables of individuals were
not so easily discovered.
Torture was, therefore, at once employed to discover the hidden
treasures. After all had been given, if the sum seemed too little, the
proprietors were brutally punished for their poverty or their supposed
dissimulation. A gentlewoman, named Fabry, with her aged mother and
other females of the family, had taken refuge in the cellar of her
mansion. As the day was drawing to a close, a band of plunderers
entered, who, after ransacking the house, descended to the cellarage.
Finding the door barred, they forced it open with gunpowder. The
mother, who was nearest the entrance, fell dead on the threshold.
Stepping across her mangled body, the brigands sprang upon her
daughter, loudly demanding the property which they believed to be
concealed. They likewise insisted on being informed where the master
of the house had taken refuge. Protestations of ignorance as to hidden
treasure, or the whereabouts of her husband, who, for aught she knew,
was lying dead in the streets, were of no avail. To make her more
communicative, they hanged her on a beam in the cellar, and after a
few moments cut her down before life was extinct. Still receiving no
satisfactory reply, where a satisfactory reply was impossible, they
hanged her again. Again, after another brief interval, they gave her a
second release, and a fresh interrogatory. This barbarity they
repeated several times, till they were satisfied that there was
nothing to be gained by it, while, on the other hand, they were losing
much valuable time. Hoping to be more successful elsewhere, they left
her hanging for the last time, and trooped off to fresher fields.
Strange to relate, the person thus horribly tortured survived. A
servant in her family, married to a Spanish soldier, providentially
entered the house in time to rescue her perishing mistress. She was
restored to existence, but never to reason. Her brain was hopelessly
crazed, and she passed the remainder of her life wandering about her
house, or feebly digging in her garden for the buried treasure which
she had been thus fiercely solicited to reveal.
A wedding-feast was rudely interrupted. Two young persons, neighbors
of opulent families, had been long betrothed, and the marriage-day had
been fixt for Sunday, the fatal 4th of November. The guests were
assembled, the ceremony concluded, and the nuptial banquet in
progress, when the horrible outcries in the streets proclaimed that
the Spaniards had broken loose. Hour after hour of trembling
expectation succeeded. At last, a thundering at the gate proclaimed
the arrival of a band of brigands. Preceded by their captain, a large
number of soldiers forced their way into the house, ransacking every
chamber, no opposition being offered by the family and friends, too
few and powerless to cope with this band of well-armed ruffians. Plate
chests, wardrobes, desks, caskets of jewelry were freely offered,
eagerly accepted, but not found sufficient, and to make the luckless
wretches furnish more than they possest, the usual brutalities were
employed. The soldiers began by striking the bridegroom dead. The
bride fell shrieking into her mother's arms, whence she was torn by
the murderers, who immediately put the mother to death, and an
indiscriminate massacre then followed the fruitless attempts to
obtain by threats and torture treasure which did not exist. The bride,
who was of remarkable beauty, was carried off to the citadel. Maddened
by this last outrage, the father, who was the only man of the party
left alive, rushed upon the Spaniards. Wresting a sword from one of
the crew, the old man dealt with it so fiercely that he stretched more
than one enemy dead at his feet, but it is needless to add that he was
soon dispatched.
Meantime, while the party were concluding the plunder of the mansion,
the bride was left in a lonely apartment of the fortress. Without
wasting time in fruitless lamentation, she resolved to quit the life
which a few hours had made so desolate. She had almost succeeded in
hanging herself with a massive gold chain which she wore, when her
captor entered the apartment. Inflamed, not with lust, but with
avarice, excited not by her charms, but by her jewelry, he rescued her
from her perilous position. He then took possession of her chain and
the other trinkets with which her wedding-dress was adorned, and
caused her to be entirely stript of her clothing. She was then
scourged with rods till her beautiful body was bathed in blood, and at
last alone, naked, nearly mad, was sent back into the city. Here the
forlorn creature wandered up and down through the blazing streets,
among the heaps of dead and dying, till she was at last put out of her
misery by a gang of soldiers.
Such are a few isolated instances, accidentally preserved in their
details, of the general horrors inflicted on this occasion. Others
innumerable have sunk into oblivion. On the morning of the 5th of
November Antwerp presented a ghastly sight. The magnificent marble
town-house, celebrated as a "world's wonder," even in that age and
country, in which so much splendor was lavished on municipal palaces,
stood a blackened ruin--all but the walls destroyed, while its
archives, accounts, and other valuable contents had perished. The more
splendid portion of the city had been consumed, at least five hundred
palaces, mostly of marble or hammered stone, being a smoldering mass
of destruction. The dead bodies of those fallen in the massacre were
on every side, in greatest profusion around the Place de Meer, among
the Gothic pillars of the Exchange, and in the streets near the
town-house. The German soldiers lay in their armor, some with their
heads burned from their bodies, some with legs and arms consumed by
the flames through which they had fought. The Margrave Goswyn
Verreyck, the burgomaster Van der Meere, the magistrates Lancelot Van
Urselen, Nicholas Van Boekholt, and other leading citizens lay among
piles of less distinguished slain. They remained unburied until the
overseers of the poor, on whom the living had then more importunate
claims than the dead, were compelled by Roda to bury them out of the
pauper fund. The murderers were too thrifty to be at funeral charges
for their victims. The ceremony was not hastily performed, for the
number of corpses had not been completed. Two days longer the havoc
lasted in the city. Of all the crimes which men can commit, whether
from deliberate calculation or in the frenzy of passion, hardly one
was omitted, for riot, gaming, rape, which had been postponed to the
more stringent claims of robbery and murder, were now rapidly added to
the sum of atrocities. History has recorded the account indelibly on
her brazen tablets; it can be adjusted only at the judgment-seat
above.
Of all the deeds of darkness yet compassed in the Netherlands this was
the worst. It was called The Spanish Fury, by which dread name it has
been known for ages. The city, which had been a world of wealth and
splendor, was changed to a charnel-house, and from that hour its
commercial prosperity was blasted. Other causes had silently girdled
the yet green and flourishing tree, but the Spanish Fury was the fire
which consumed it to ashes. Three thousand dead bodies were discovered
in the streets, as many more were estimated to have perished in the
Scheld, and nearly an equal number were burned or destroyed in other
ways. Eight thousand persons undoubtedly were put to death. Six
millions of property were destroyed by the fire, and at least as much
more was obtained by the Spaniards.