salomon henning's "chronicle of livonia and courland" gives the most touching description of the mass suicide:one should have seen this sorrow beyond all sorrow as the good people knelt in the room beneath which the gunpowder had been placed. man and wife held each others' hands, children gathered around their parents, some still nursing at their mothers' breasts, all awaiting blessed st. simeon's hour. nor, as the muscovite soon hereafter began to storm and invade the castle, was it long delayed. the gunpowder was ignited and all were blown up, aside from those who had hidden elsewhere in the castle...