The streets, meanwhile, were encumbered with heaps of corpses, not a single one of which had been buried since the capture of the town.

The remains of nearly all the able bodied male population, dismembered, gnawed by dogs or blackened by fire, polluted the midsummer air meantime, the women had been again driven into the cathedral, where they had housed during the siege, and where they now crouched together in trembling expectation of their fate.' On the 29th August, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Philip issued an order that every woman, without an exception, should be driven out of the city into the French territory.

Saint Quentin, which seventy years before had been a Flemish town, was to be re-annexed, and not a single man, woman, or child who could speak the French language was to remain another hour in the place.

The tongues of the men had been effectually silenced.

The women, to the number of three thousand five hundred, were now compelled to leave the cathedral and the city.