Wherever Romero had a chance of fighting the States forces he did so, and Mendoza gives particulars of many brilliant skirmishes in which the Spaniards were successful, but which usually ended in an indiscriminate massacre of Flemings. Sancho de Avila in the Antwerp citadel the while was keeping up a close communication with the mutineers at Alost, Ghent, and other places, whilst the citizens were collecting such forces of Walloons and German mercenaries as they could. Sancho at last was informed that unless he ceased to send aid to Alost he himself would be held as a rebel to the King. This was a signal that he must either submit to the dictation of the despised Flemish Council or fight, and he chose the latter alternative. He sent out messengers on all sides for the Spaniards to concentrate in Antwerp, and soon Romero started out from Lierre with all his men. On his way he met the main body of malcontents from Alost and greeted them with effusion. Vargas with his men joined them also, and on the 4th of November they all entered the citadel of Antwerp together. The townsmen and their troops had already begun to run up earthworks to defend themselves against the bloodthirsty marauders who had made a shambles of Alost, Maestricht, and wherever else they had gained the upper hand. The rich booty of Antwerp, and the thirst for blood, they knew would launch the greedy hawks from the citadel upon the panting quarry {118} below, and they determined to sell their lives and property dearly. Hungry and tired as the Alost men were on their arrival at daybreak, no meal would they consume until, as they said, they could break their fast in Antwerp. Slaking their thirst and firing their brains only with wine, by eleven o'clock before noon they were ready for the struggle. Then with solemn prayer and blessing of banners as a preparation for their fell work, they swept down in three bodies to the town to the aggregate number of about 6,000 men. The scene that followed has often been described, and need not be repeated here. In a few hours the richest city in Christendom was a ravished corpse of its former self. Romero, with his stalwarts of Spaniards and Almains, entered the city by the St. George's gate and swept along the street of St. Michael, driving weak young Egmont before him into a church at the end, where the Count was taken.