The principal burgomaster, Heinrich Lambertszoon, was
less fortunate. Known to be affluent, he was tortured by exposing the
soles of his feet to a fire until they were almost consumed. On promise
that his life should be spared he then agreed to pay a heavy ransom;
but hardly had he furnished the stipulated sum when, by express
order of Don Frederic himself, he was hanged in his own doorway,
and his dissevered limbs afterwards nailed to the gates of the city.
"Nearly all the inhabitants of Naarden, soldiers and citizens, were
thus destroyed; and now Don Frederic issued peremptory orders that no
one, on pain of death, should give lodging or food to any fugitive. He
likewise forbade to the dead all that could now be forbidden them--a
grave. Three weeks long did these unburied bodies pollute the streets,
nor could the few wretched women who still cowered within such houses
as had escaped the flames ever move from their lurking-places without
treading upon the festering remains of what had been their husbands,
their fathers, or their brethren. Such was the express command of him
whom the flatterers called the 'most divine genius ever known'. Shortly
afterwards came an order to dismantle the fortifications, which had
certainly proved sufficiently feeble in the hour of need, and to raze
what was left of the city from the surface of the earth.
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