Coldly, he replied:
“You will be shot; so will your daughter and your servants.”
The pillage and the methodical setting on fire of the town now began. All the houses on the right-hand side of the square were in flames. From time to time, the soldiers apostrophized the women, shouting:
“You’re going to be shot, you’re going to be shot!”
“At that moment,” says Madame Tielemans, in her sworn deposition, “the soldiers were leaving our house, their arms filled with bottles of wine. They opened the windows and removed all the contents of our rooms. I turned away so as not to behold the pillage. By the lurid light of the burning houses, my eyes fell upon my husband, my son and my brother-in-law, accompanied by some other gentlemen who were being led to execution. Never shall I forget the sight nor the look on the face of my husband seeking his house for the last time and asking himself what had befallen his wife and daughter, while I, lest I should sap his courage, could not call out, ‘I am here!’”
The hours passed. The women were driven out of the town and led like a herd of cattle, along a road strewn with corpses, to a distant meadow, where they were penned until morning. The men were arrested and their hands tied behind their backs with copper wire so cruelly tightened as to draw blood. They were gathered into groups and made to lie down so that their heads touched the ground and they were unable to make any movement. The night was spent in this way, with the town burning and the pillage and orgy continuing.
Between five and six in the morning, the military authorities decided that the executions should begin and that one of the largest groups of prisoners, composed of about a hundred civilians, should be present at the death of the burgomaster, his son and his brother. An officer informed the burgomaster that his hour had come. On hearing these words, a citizen of Aerschot, Claes van Nuffel by name, went up to the officer, begged him to spare the chief magistrate’s life and offered to die in his stead. He added that he was the burgomaster’s political adversary, but that he considered that, at this moment, M. Tielemans was essential to the town.
“No,” replied the officer, harshly, “we must have the burgomaster.”