had been called back from garrison work in Friesland, and a strong line drawn in front of Haarlem.  Headed off, the Black Band turned suddenly away.  Passing Amsterdam and Culemborg, it penetrated down into South Holland, whence it would be easy to pass back into Gueldres.  Asperen was its next prey.  Three times the citizens beat off the cruel foe:  a few more to man their walls, and they might have driven him right away, to overwhelm others less fortunate and less brave.

But it was not to be.  At the fourth attempt the marauders were successful, and massacre ensued.  Death to the men, worse than death to the women:  nor age nor innocence could touch those black hearts.  A schoolmaster with his boys fled into a church and hid trembling in the rood-loft.  Before long they were discovered.  Thirsting for blood, some of the monsters rushed up the steps and tossed the shrieking victims over on to the pikes of their comrades below.  When all the butchery was finished, a few helpless and infirm survivors were dragged out of hiding-places.  The miserable creatures were driven out of the city and the gates barred in their faces.  For a month the Black Band held Asperen as a standing camp, living upon the provisions stored up by the dead.  Then Nassau came with troops and drove them forth, pursuing into Gueldres, where he burned ‘46 good villages’ in revenge.  The sight of fire blazing to heaven is appalling enough when men are ranged all on one side, and the battle is with the element alone.  Our peace-lapped imaginations cannot picture the terror of flames kindled aforethought.  As those poor fugitives scattered over the country, cowering into the darkness out of the fire’s searching glow, they cannot but have recalled the words:  ’Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days.’  At least they could give thanks that their flight was not in the winter.

Meanwhile Long Peter had not been idle.  On 14 August he had a great battle with the Hollanders off Hoorn.  Eleven ships he took, and cast their crews into the sea:  500 men, save one, a Gueldrian, struggling in the calm summer waters and stretching out their hands to a foe who knew no pity.  In September he surrounded a merchant fleet.  The Easterlings escaped at heavy ransom; but the crews of three Holland vessels were flung to the waves.  Then he carried the war on to the land, to glean what the Black Band had left.  With 1200 men he took Hoorn by escalade; plunder-laden and sated, they returned to the sea.  Nothing was too small or too helpless for his rapacity.  Along the coast they picked up a barge of Enckhuizen.  Its only crew, master and mate, were thrown overboard, and Peter’s fleet sailed upon its way.  We must remember that the provinces engaged in this internecine strife were not widely diverse in race, and that to-day they are peacefully united under one governance.