History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

Haarlem had endured. For seven weeks there had
not been a morsel of bread within the city. The
vilest substitutes were greedily devoured; and even
these were now almost exhausted. To complete
their suffering, pestilence was added to famine.
Already reduced to skeletons, hundreds had no
strength to withstand this new attack. Men and
women every hour dropped dead on the streets.
Whole families were found to be corpses when the
doors of their houses were forced open in the
morning, and the survivors had hardly enough
strength left to bury them. The dead were carried to
their graves by those who to-morrow would need
the same office at the hands of others.
Amid the awful reiteration of these dismal
scenes, one passion still survived-resistance to the
Spaniards. Some few there were, utterly broken
down under this accumulation of sorrows, who did
indeed whisper the word "surrender," deeming that
even Spanish soldiers could inflict nothing more
terrible than they were already enduring. But these
proposals were instantly and indignantly silenced
by the great body of the citizens, to whom neither
402