Everywhere the Walloons turned and fled before the Spaniards. The brave Champigny, Granvelle's brother, did his best heroically; the townsmen, unused to arms, made what resistance they could, but the States troops were worse than useless, and butchery was the only order of the day. In the great square every house was occupied by Sancho de Avila's men, who kept up a fusilade upon the frightened crowds of unarmed people huddled together in the doorways. Soon the curling smoke showed that the rich stores of merchandise, the noble palaces of the merchant princes, and the lowly cottages of the artisans were alike doomed to wanton destruction. The Spaniards, drunk with blood, blind with rage, spared neither {119} age, sex, nor faith; and with one great gust of fury swept like a blight over the doomed city. When the blood-lust was partly sated, it was found that 6,000 unarmed people at least had been slaughtered, and 6,000,000 ducats worth of property stolen, with as much again burnt. The States infantry had all fled or been killed. The Catholic Flemish nobles were scattered and lost, and the Spaniards had Antwerp beneath their talons. Strada says that the massacre and plunder were as much the work of the Walloons and Germans as of the Spaniards, and bears testimony to the efforts of the Spanish leaders to restrain the fury of their men, mentioning Sancho de Avila, Mondragon, and others as having exerted their influence to that end, but markedly omits the name of Romero. Rodas, writing to the King a day after the fight, says the town was sacked against orders, and that Avila, Romero, and Vargas, used great diligence to stop plunder. "They deserve," he says, "well of his Majesty for the services they have rendered in this great victory." Dr. Wilson, who certainly was not prejudiced in favour of the Spaniards, says, on the other hand, in a letter to Walsingham of the 13th of November,[30] that he fears the Spaniards much less than the English refugees, "who are said to have done the greatest murders and most horrible above all others, and all Englishmen are hated for their sake."