History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

Antwerp, to be converted into money.[4] The
inhabitants of the other cities which had submitted
to William were permitted to redeem their lives by
the payment of an enormous ransom.
Not so, however, the cities of Zutphen and
Naarden. Zutphen was subjected to the same
shocking barbarities which had been inflicted on
Mechlin. Here the spoil to be gathered was less, for
the town was not so rich as Mechlin, but the
licence given to the sword was on that account all
the greater; and when the soldiers grew weary with
slaughtering, they threw their victims into the Issel,
and indulged themselves in the horrid pastime of
pelting the drowning men and women with missiles
as they rose to the surface before finally sinking.
We record the fate of Naarden last, because its
doom was the most appalling of the three; for it is a
series of horrors which we are thus briefly tracing
to its climax. Naarden opened its gates to Don
Frederic de Toledo, the son of Alva, on a promise
of immunity from sack for a slight equivalent. The
promise of Toledo was violated with a shocking
perfidy. First the male population were put to the
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