History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

and Douay, ravaging and plundering as they went
onward. Not a penny of property did they
appropriate, not a hair of the head of monk or nun
did they hurt. It was not plunder but destruction
which they sought, and their wrath if fierce was
discharged not on human beings, but on graven
images. They smote, and defaced, and broke in
pieces, with exterminating fury, the statues and
pictures in the churches, without permitting even
one to escape, "and that with so much security,"
says Strada, "and with so little regard of the
magistrate or prelates, as you would think they had
been sent for by the Common Council, and were in
pay of the city."[7]
Tidings of what was going on in Flanders were
speedily carried into Brabant, and there too the
tempest gathered with like suddenness, and
expended itself with like fury. Its more terrific
burst was in Antwerp, which the wealth and
devotion of preceding ages had embellished with
so many ecclesiastical fabrics, some of them of
superb architectural magnificence, and all of them
filled with the beautiful creations of the chisel and
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