The brocades, laces, and jewelry of Antwerp merchants were converted into coats of mail for their destroyers.

The goldsmiths, however, thus obtained an opportunity to outwit their plunderers, and mingled in the golden armor which they were forced to furnish much more alloy than their employers knew.

A portion of the captured booty was thus surreptitiously redeemed.
In this Spanish Fury many more were massacred in Antwerp than in the Saint Bartholomew at Paris.

Almost as many living human beings were dashed out of existence now as there had been statues destroyed in the memorable image-breaking of Antwerp, ten years before, an event which had sent such a thrill of horror through the heart of Catholic Christendom.
Yet the Netherlanders and the Protestants of Europe may be forgiven, if they regarded this massacre of their brethren with as much execration as had been bestowed upon that fury against stocks and stones.

At least, the image-breakers, had been actuated by an idea, and their hands were polluted neither with blood nor rapine.