In 1566, William of Orange was in Antwerp, and two years later, as soon as the prince had left the city, the natives bent to the rule of the oppressor. The Spaniards, defeated at Brussels, prepared some years after for an attack upon Antwerp, then the richest city of Belgium. On a grey wintry morning, the enemy encompassed the walls of the city, the besieged having been reinforced by an army of Walloons. The fight was one of the most desperate ever recorded in history. Gaining entrance, the Spaniards swept up the chief thoroughfares; "the confused mob of fugitives and conquerors, Spaniards, Walloons, Germans, burghers," writes Motley, "struggling, shouting, striking, cursing, dying, swayed hither and thither like a stormy sea."
A frightful massacre followed upon the conquest of Antwerp, no less than eight thousand men, women, and children were put to death by the ferocious victors.
Merchants were tortured in order to extort from them the hiding-places of their gold; the poor were killed because they had no store for the plunderer; and a young bride was torn from the arms of the bridegroom, and conveyed to a dungeon, where she tried to strangle herself with her long gold chain. She was stripped of her jewels and dress, beaten, and flung into the streets, to meet death at the hands of a rabble of soldiers. Such were the horrors of the capture of Antwerp, to be followed by the "Spanish Fury," in which more persons were slain than in the terrible massacre of St Bartholomew.
The siege of 1830, on 27th October, was one of the most sanguinary conflicts in modern warfare. Attacked by the implacable General Chassé, the inhabitants had to face a terrible cannonade. The cathedral was damaged, the arsenal fired, and the townsfolk crouched in terror in vaults and cellars, while many of them fled into the open country.
Again in the revolution of 1830, and in 1832, Antwerp was the scene of battle.
From such records of carnage and cruelty, it is a relief to turn the pages of history till we read of the arts that flourished for so long in Antwerp. Not only were the wealthy classes of the city cultivated beyond the standard of many countries of Europe, but the artisans also shared in the general culture, and cherished respect for art.