“No attempt, all this time, was made to stop these proceedings, on the part of the 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 sound of violence in the distance, they seem to have been struck with a panic. The Catholics remained within doors, fearing a general uprising of the Protestants. The Protestants feared to move abroad, lest they should be confounded with the rioters. For three days these dismal scenes continued.... 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.” Cathedrals, chapels, monasteries, and nunneries, and even hospitals, were destroyed by these ignorant fanatics. The great library of Vicogne, one of the noblest collections in the Netherlands, perished in the flames kindled by the mob. Four hundred churches were sacked by the insurgents in Flanders alone. The damage to the cathedral at Antwerp was said to amount to four hundred thousand ducats. The whole work of this terrible devastation, occupied less than a fortnight. This wholesale destruction, perpetrated by the Iconoclasts, cannot be estimated. It is a melancholy fact that they pretended to be actuated by a zeal for the Reformation, thus dishonoring the great and glorious cause, by their ignorant fanaticism. An irreparable loss was occasioned by the destruction of manuscripts, statuary, and paintings. But the misguided Iconoclasts, ruthless as was their terrible destruction of magnificent cathedrals and priceless gems of art, must in justice have this excuse offered in their behalf, that they had been enfuriated by the infamous Inquisition which had turned Spain into one great _auto de fé_ of burning martyrs, and which threatened, through the bigotry of Philip II., to invade their own land with its fiendish cruelties. Compared with the Inquisition, with its scarlet hands reeking with the life-blood of its tortured victims, the retaliation of the Iconoclasts is scarcely to be wondered at. The tidings of the tumult in the Netherlands was received by Philip with the greatest indignation, and he exclaimed: “It shall cost them dear; by the soul of my father, I swear it, it shall cost them dear!”