Their fury now turned against the other statues, which were quickly overthrown from their pedestals. The paintings that lined the walls of the cathedral were cut into shreds. Many of these were the choicest specimens of Flemish art, even then, in its dawn, giving promise of the glorious day which was to shed a lustre over the land.
But the pride of the cathedral, and of Antwerp, was the great organ, renowned throughout the Netherlands, not more for its dimensions than its perfect workmanship. With their ladders the rioters scaled the lofty fabric,[{276}] and with their implements soon converted it, like all else they laid their hands on, into a heap of rubbish.
The ruin was now universal. Nothing beautiful, nothing holy, was spared. The altars—and there were no less than seventy in the vast edifice—were overthrown one after another; their richly embroidered coverings rudely rent away; their gold and silver vessels appropriated by the plunderers. The sacramental bread was trodden under foot; the wine was quaffed by the miscreants, in golden chalices, to the health of one another, or of the Gueux; and the holy oil was profanely used to anoint their shoes and sandals. The sculptured tracery on the walls, the costly offerings that enriched the shrines, the screens of gilded bronze, the delicately carved wood-work of the pulpit, the marble and alabaster ornaments, all went down under the fierce blows of the iconoclasts. The pavement was strewed with the ruined splendors of a church, which in size and magnificence was perhaps second only to St. Peter's among the churches of Christendom.
As the light of day faded, the assailants supplied its place with such light as they could obtain from the candles which they snatched from the altars. It was midnight before the work of destruction was completed. Thus toiling in darkness, feebly dispelled by tapers the rays of which could scarcely penetrate the vaulted distances of the cathedral, it is a curious circumstance—if true—than no one was injured by the heavy masses of timber, stone, and metal that were everywhere falling around them.[812] The whole number engaged in this work is said not to have exceeded a hundred men, women, and boys,—women of the lowest description, dressed in men's attire.
When their task was completed, they sallied forth in a body from the doors of the cathedral, some singing the Psalms of David, others roaring out the fanatical war-cry of "Vivent les Gueux!" Flushed with success, and joined on the way by stragglers like themselves, they burst open the doors of one church after another; and by the time morning broke, the principal temples in the city had been dealt with in the same ruthless manner as the cathedral.[813]
No attempt all this time was made to stop these proceedings on the part of magistrates or citizens. As they beheld from their windows the bodies of armed men hurrying to and fro by the gleam of their torches, and listened to the sounds of violence in the distance, they seem to have been struck with a panic. The Catholics remained within doors, fearing a general rising of the Protestants. The Protestants feared to move abroad, lest they should be confounded with the rioters. Some imagined their own turn might come next, and appeared in arms at the entrances of their houses, prepared to defend them against the enemy.
SACRILEGIOUS OUTRAGES.
When gorged with the plunder of the city, the insurgents poured out at the gates, and fell with the same violence on the churches, convents, and other religious edifices in the suburbs. For three days these dismal scenes continued, without resistance on the part of the inhabitants. Amidst the ruin in the cathedral, the mob had alone spared the royal arms and the escutcheons of the knights of the Golden Fleece, emblazoned on the walls. Calling this to mind, they now returned into the city to complete the work. But some of the knights,[{277}] who were at Antwerp, collected a handful of their followers, and, with a few of the citizens, forced their way into the cathedral, arrested ten or twelve of the rioters, and easily dispersed the remainder; while a gallows erected on an eminence admonished the offenders of the fate that awaited them. The facility with which the disorders were repressed by a few resolute men naturally suggests the inference, that many of the citizens had too much sympathy with the authors of the outrages to care to check them, still less to bring the culprits to punishment. An orthodox chronicler of the time vents his indignation against a people who were so much more ready to stand by their hearths than by their altars.[814]
The fate of Antwerp had its effect on the country. The flames of fanaticism, burning fiercer than ever, quickly spread over the northern, as they had done over the western provinces. In Holland, Utrecht, Friesland,—everywhere, in short, with a few exceptions on the southern borders,—mobs rose against the churches. In some places, as Rotterdam, Dort, Haarlem, the magistrates were wary enough to avert the storm by delivering up the images, or at least by removing them from the buildings.[815] It was rare that any attempt was made at resistance. Yet on one or two occasions this so far succeeded that a handful of troops sufficed to rout the iconoclasts. At Anchyn, four hundred of the rabble were left dead on the field. But the soldiers had no relish for their duty, and on other occasions, when called on to perform it, refused to bear arms against their countrymen.[816] The leaven of heresy was too widely spread among the people.
Thus the work of plunder and devastation went on vigorously throughout the land. Cathedral and chapel, monastery and nunnery, religious houses of every description, even hospitals, were delivered up to the tender mercies of the Reformers. The monks fled, leaving behind them treasures of manuscripts and well-stored cellars, which latter the invaders soon emptied of their contents, while they consigned the former to the flames. The terrified nuns, escaping half naked, at dead of night, from their convents, were too happy to find a retreat among their friends and kinsmen in the city.[817] Neither monk nor nun ventured to go abroad in the conventual garb. Priests might be sometimes seen hurrying away with some relic or sacred treasure under their robes, which they were eager to save from the spoilers. In the general sack not even the abode of the dead was respected; and the sepulchres of the counts of Flanders were violated, and laid open to the public gaze![818]