History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

of Noircarmes, discomfited, and almost
exterminated. Another company also marching to
its assistance met a similar fate. Those who
escaped the slaughter took refuge in the church of
Watrelots, only to be overtaken by a more dreadful
death. The belfry, into which they had retreated,
was set on fire, and the whole perished. These
disasters, however, did not dispirit the besieged.
They made vigorous sallies, and kept the
enemy at bay. To cut off all communication
between the city and the surrounding country, and
so reduce the besieged by famine, orders were
given to the soldiers to lay the district waste. The
villages were pillaged or burned, the inhabitants
slaughtered in cold blood, or stripped naked in the
dead of winter, or roasted alive over slow fires to
amuse a brutal soldiery. Matrons and virgins were
sold in public auction at tuck of drum. While these
horrible butcheries were being enacted outside
Valenciennes, Noircarmes was drawing his lines
closer about the city. In answer to a summons from
Margaret, the inhabitants offered to surrender on
certain conditions. These were indignantly rejected,
226