[Sidenote: August 24, 1572] Freed from menace in this quarter and encouraged by his brilliant victory, Alva turned north with an army now increased to 40,000 veterans.

First he took Malines and delivered it to his soldiers for "the most dreadful and inhuman sack of the day" as a contemporary wrote.

The army then marched to Guelders and stormed Zutphen under express orders from their general "not to leave one man alive or one building unburnt." "With the help of God," as Alva piously reported, the same punishment was meted out to Naarden.

Then he marched to the still royalist Amsterdam from which base he proceeded to invest Haarlem.

The siege was a long and hard one for the Spaniards, harassed by the winter weather and by epidemics.