The account of all this misery, minutely detailed to him by Alva, acted like magic.

The blood of twenty-three hundred of his fellow-creatures--coldly murdered by his orders, in a single city--proved for the sanguinary monarch the elixir of life: he drank and was refreshed.

'_The principal medicine which has cured his Majesty,_' wrote Secretary Cayas from Madrid to Alva, 'is the joy caused to him by the _good news_ which you have communicated of _the surrender of Haarlem_.'" I know nothing of the women of Haarlem to-day, but in the sixteenth century they were among the bravest and most efficient in the world, and it was largely their efforts and example which enabled the city to hold out so long.

Motley describes them as a corps of three hundred fighting women, "all females of respectable character, armed with sword, musket, and dagger.

Their chief, Kenau Hasselaer, was a widow of distinguished family, and unblemished reputation, about forty-seven years of age, who, at the head of her amazons, participated in many of the most fiercely contested actions of the siege, both within and without the walls.