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Title: History of the United Netherlands, 1597-98

Author: John Lothrop Motley

Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4869]

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HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Vol. 69

History of the United Netherlands, 1597-1598

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Straggle of the Netherlands against Spain--March to Turnhout--

Retreat of the Spanish commander--Pursuit and attack--Demolition of

the Spanish army--Surrender of the garrison of Turnhout--Improved

military science--Moral effect of the battle--The campaign in

France--Attack on Amiens by the Spaniards--Sack and burning of the

city--De Rosny's plan for reorganization of the finances--Jobbery

and speculation--Philip's repudiation of his debts--Effects of the

measure--Renewal of persecution by the Jesuits--Contention between

Turk and Christian--Envoy from the King of Poland to the Hague to

plead for reconciliation with Philip--His subsequent presentation to

Queen Elizabeth--Military events Recovery of Amiens--Feeble

operations of the confederate powers against Spain--Marriage of the

Princess Emilia, sister of Maurice--Reduction of the castle and town

of Alphen--Surrender of Rheinberg--Capitulation of Meurs--Surrender

of Grol--Storming and taking of Brevoort Capitulation of Enschede,

Ootmaxsum, Oldenzaal, and Lingen--Rebellion of the Spanish garrisons

in Antwerp and Ghent--Progress of the peace movement between Henry

and Philip--Relations of the three confederate powers--Henry's

scheme for reconciliation with Spain--His acceptance of Philip's

offer of peace announced to Elizabeth--Endeavours for a general

peace.

The old year had closed with an abortive attempt of Philip to fulfil his

favourite dream--the conquest of England. The new year opened with a

spirited effort of Prince Maurice to measure himself in the open field

with the veteran legions of Spain.

Turnhout, in Brabant, was an open village--the largest in all the

Netherlands lying about twenty-five English miles in almost a direct line

south from Gertruydenburg. It was nearly as far distant in an easterly

direction from Antwerp, and was about five miles nearer Breda than it was

to Gertruydenberg.

At this place the cardinal-archduke had gathered a considerable force,

numbering at least four thousand of his best infantry, with several

squadrons of cavalry, the whole under-command of the general-in-chief of

artillery, Count Varax. People in the neighbourhood were growing uneasy,

for it was uncertain in what direction it might be intended to use this

formidable force. It was perhaps the cardinal's intention to make a

sudden assault upon Breda, the governor of which seemed not inclined to

carry out his proposition to transfer that important city to the king,

or it was thought that he might take advantage of a hard frost and cross

the frozen morasses and estuaries into the land of Ter Tholen, where he

might overmaster some of the important strongholds of Zeeland.

Marcellus Bax, that boldest and most brilliant of Holland's cavalry

officers, had come to Maurice early in January with an urgent suggestion

that no time might be lost in making an attack upon the force of

Turnhout, before they should succeed in doing any mischief. The prince

pondered the proposition, for a little time, by himself, and then

conferred very privately upon the subject with the state-council. On the

14th January it was agreed with that body that the enterprise should be

attempted, but with the utmost secrecy. A week later the council sent

an express messenger to Maurice urging him not to expose his own life to

peril, but to apprise them as soon as possible as to the results of the

adventure.

Meantime, patents had been sent to the various garrisons for fifty

companies of foot and sixteen squadrons of horse. On the 22nd January

Maurice came to Gertruydenberg, the place of rendezvous, attended by Sir

Francis Vere and Count Solms. Colonel Kloetingen was already there with

the transports of ammunition and a few pieces of artillery from Zeeland,

and in the course of the day the whole infantry force had assembled.

Nothing could have been managed with greater promptness or secrecy.

Next day, before dawn, the march began. The battalia was led by Van der

Noot, with six companies of Hollanders. Then came Vere, with eight

companies of the reserve, Dockray with eight companies of Englishmen,

Murray with eight companies of Scotch, and Kloetingen and

La Corde with twelve companies of Dutch and Zeelanders. In front of the

last troop under La Corde marched the commander of the artillery, with

two demi-cannon and two field-pieces, followed by the ammunition and,

baggage trains. Hohenlo arrived just as the march was beginning, to whom

the stadholder, notwithstanding their frequent differences, communicated

his plans, and entrusted the general command of the cavalry. That force

met the expedition at Osterhout, a league's distance from Gertruydenberg,

and consisted of the best mounted companies, English and Dutch, from the

garrisons of Breda, Bergen, Nymegen, and the Zutphen districts.

It was a dismal, drizzly, foggy morning; the weather changing to steady

rain as the expedition advanced. There had been alternate frost and thaw

for the few previous weeks, and had that condition of the atmosphere

continued the adventure could not have been attempted. It had now turned

completely to thaw. The roads were all under water, and the march was

sufficiently difficult. Nevertheless, it was possible; so the stout

Hollanders, Zeelanders, and Englishmen struggled on manfully, shoulder to

shoulder, through the mist and the mire. By nightfall the expedition had

reached Ravels, at less than a league's distance from Turnhout, having

accomplished, under the circumstances, a very remarkable march of over

twenty miles. A stream of water, the Neethe, one of the tributaries of

the Scheld, separated Ravels from Turnhout, and was crossed by a stone

bridge. It was an anxious moment. Maurice discovered by his scouts that

he was almost within cannon-shot of several of the most famous regiments

in the Spanish army lying fresh, securely posted, and capable of making

an attack at any moment. He instantly threw forward Marcellus Bax with

four squadrons of Bergen cavalry, who, jaded as they were by their day's

work, were to watch the bridge that night, and to hold it against all

comers and at every hazard.

The Spanish commander, on his part, had reconnoitred the advancing, foe,

for it was impossible for the movement to have been so secret or so swift

over those inundated roads as to be shrouded to the last moment in

complete mystery. It was naturally to be expected therefore that those

splendid legions--the famous Neapolitan tercio of Trevico, the veteran

troops of Sultz and Hachicourt, the picked Epirote and Spanish cavalry of

Nicolas Basta and Guzman--would be hurled upon the wearied, benumbed,

bemired soldiers of the republic, as they came slowly along after their

long march through the cold winter's rain.

Varax took no such heroic resolution. Had he done so that January

afternoon, the career of Maurice of Nassau might have been brought to a

sudden close, despite the affectionate warning of the state-council.

Certainly it was difficult for any commander to be placed in a more

perilous position than that in which the stadholder found himself. He

remained awake and afoot the whole night, perfecting his arrangements for

the morning, and watching every indication of a possible advance on the

part of the enemy. Marcellus Bax and his troopers remained at the bridge

till morning, and were so near the Spaniards that they heard the voices

of their pickets, and could even distinguish in the distance the various

movements in their camp.

But no attack was made, and the little army of Maurice was allowed

to sleep off its fatigue. With the dawn of the 24th January,

a reconnoitring party, sent out from the republican camp, discovered that

Varax, having no stomach for an encounter, had given his enemies the

slip. Long before daylight his baggage and ammunition trains had been

sent off in a southerly direction, and his whole force had already left

the village of Turnhout. It was the intention of the commander to take

refuge in the fortified city of Herenthals, and there await the attack of

Maurice. Accordingly, when the stadholder arrived on the fields beyond

the immediate precincts of the village, he saw the last of the enemy's

rearguard just disappearing from view. The situation was a very peculiar

one.

The rain and thaw, following upon frosty weather, had converted the fenny

country in many directions into a shallow lake. The little river which

flowed by the village had risen above its almost level banks, and could

with difficulty be traversed at any point, while there was no permanent

bridge, such as there was at Ravels. The retreating Spaniards had made

their way through a narrow passage, where a roughly-constructed causeway

of planks had enabled the infantry to cross the waters almost in single

file, while the cavalry had floundered through as best they might. Those

who were acquainted with the country reported that beyond this defile

there was an upland heath, a league in extent, full of furze and

thickets, where it would be easy enough for Varax to draw up his army in

battle array, and conceal it from view. Maurice's scouts, too, brought

information that the Spanish commander had left a force of musketeers to

guard the passage at the farther end.

This looked very like an ambush. In the opinion of Hohenlo, of Solms,

and of Sidney, an advance was not to be thought of; and if the adventure

seemed perilous to such hardy and experienced campaigners as these three,

the stadholder might well hesitate. Nevertheless, Maurice had made up

his mind. Sir Francis Vere and Marcellus Bax confirmed him in his

determination, and spoke fiercely of the disgrace which would come upon

the arms of the republic if now, after having made a day's march to meet

the enemy, they should turn their backs upon him just as he was doing his

best to escape.

On leave obtained from the prince, these two champions, the Englishman

and the Hollander, spurred their horses through the narrow pass, with the

waters up to the saddle-bow, at the head of a mere handful of troopers,

not more than a dozen men in all. Two hundred musketeers followed,

picking their way across the planks. As they emerged into the open

country beyond, the Spanish soldiers guarding the passage fled without

firing a shot. Such was already the discouraging effect produced upon

veterans by the unexpected order given that morning to retreat. Vere and

Bax sent word for all the cavalry to advance at once, and meantime

hovered about the rearguard of the retreating enemy, ready to charge

upon him so soon as they should be strong enough.

Maurice lost no time in plunging with his whole mounted force through the

watery defile; directing the infantry to follow as fast as practicable.

When the commander-in-chief with his eight hundred horsemen, Englishmen,

Zeelanders, Hollanders, and Germans, came upon the heath, the position

and purpose of the enemy were plainly visible. He was not drawn up in

battle order, waiting to sweep down upon his rash assailants so soon as,

after struggling through the difficult pass, they should be delivered

into his hands. On the contrary, it was obvious at a glance that his

object was still to escape. The heath of Tiel, on which Spaniards,

Italians, Walloons, Germans, Dutchmen, English; Scotch, and Irishmen now

all found themselves together, was a ridgy, spongy expanse of country,

bordered on one side by the swollen river, here flowing again through

steeper banks which were overgrown with alders and pollard willows.

Along the left of the Spanish army, as they moved in the direction of

Herenthals, was a continuous fringe of scrub-oaks, intermixed with tall

beeches, skirting the heath, and forming a leafless but almost impervious

screen for the movements of small detachments of troops. Quite at the

termination of the open apace, these thickets becoming closely crowded,

overhung another extremely narrow passage, which formed the only outlet

from the plain. Thus the heath of Tiel, upon that winter's morning, had

but a single entrance and a single exit, each very dangerous or very

fortunate for those capable of taking or neglecting the advantages

offered by the position.

The whole force of Varax, at least five thousand strong, was advancing in

close marching order towards the narrow passage by which only they could

emerge from the heath. Should they reach this point in time, and thus

effect their escape, it would be useless to attempt to follow them, for,

as was the case with the first defile, it was not possible for two

abreast to go through, while beyond was a swampy-country in which

military operations were impossible. Yet there remained less than half

a league's space for the retreating soldiers to traverse, while not a

single foot-soldier Of Maurice's army had thus far made his appearance on

the heath. All were still wallowing and struggling, single file, in the

marshy entrance, through which only the cavalry had forced their way.

Here was a dilemma. Should Maurice look calmly on while the enemy, whom

he had made so painful a forced march to meet, moved off out of reach

before his eyes? Yet certainly this was no slight triumph in itself.

There sat the stadholder on his horse at the head of eight hundred

carabineers, and there marched four of Philip's best infantry regiments,

garnished with some of his most renowned cavalry squadrons, anxious not

to seek but to avoid a combat. First came the Germans of Count Sultz,

the musketeers in front, and the spearsmen, of which the bulk of this and

of all the regiments was composed, marching in closely serried squares,

with the company standards waving over each. Next, arranged in the same

manner, came the Walloon regiments of Hachicourt and of La Barlotte.

Fourth and last came the famous Neapolitans of Marquis Trevico. The

cavalry squadrons rode on the left of the infantry, and were commanded by

Nicolas Basta, a man who had been trampling upon the Netherlanders ever

since the days of Alva, with whom he had first come to the country.

And these were the legions--these very men or their immediate

predecessors--these Italians, Spaniards, Germans, and Walloons, who

during so many terrible years had stormed and sacked almost every city

of the Netherlands, and swept over the whole breadth of those little

provinces as with the besom of destruction.

Both infantry and cavalry, that picked little army of Varax was of the

very best that had shared in the devil's work which had been the chief

industry practised for so long in the obedient Netherlands. Was it not

madness for the stadholder, at the head of eight hundred horsemen, to

assail such an army as this? Was it not to invoke upon his head the

swift vengeance of Heaven? Nevertheless, the painstaking, cautious

Maurice did not hesitate. He ordered Hohenlo, with all the Brabantine

cavalry, to ride as rapidly as their horses could carry them along the

edge of the plain, and behind the tangled woodland, by which the movement

would be concealed. He was at all hazards to intercept the enemy's

vanguard before it should reach the fatal pass. Vere and Marcellus Bax

meanwhile, supported now by Edmont with the Nymegen squadrons, were to

threaten the Spanish rear. A company of two under Laurentz was kept by

Maurice near his person in reserve.

The Spaniards steadily continued their march, but as they became aware of

certain slight and indefinite movements on their left, their cavalry,

changing their position, were transferred from the right to the left of

the line of march, and now rode between the infantry and the belt of

woods.

In a few minutes after the orders given to Hohenlo, that dashing soldier

had circumvented the Spaniards, and emerged upon the plain between them

and the entrance to the defile, The next instant the trumpets sounded a

charge, and Hohenlo fell upon the foremost regiment, that of Sultz, while

the rearguard, consisting of Trevico's Neapolitan regiment, was assailed

by Du Bois, Donck, Rysoir, Marcellus Bax, and Sir Francis Vere. The

effect seemed almost supernatural. The Spanish cavalry--those far-famed

squadrons of Guzman and Basta--broke at the first onset and galloped off

for the pass as if they had been riding a race. Most of them escaped

through the hollow into the morass beyond. The musketeers of Sultz's

regiment hardly fired a shot, and fell back in confusion upon the thickly

clustered pikemen. The assailants, every one of them in complete armour,

on powerful horses, and armed not with lances but with carbines, trampled

over the panic-struck and struggling masses of leather jerkined pikemen

and shot them at arm's length. The charge upon Trevico's men at the same

moment was just as decisive. In less time than it took afterwards to

describe the scene, those renowned veterans were broken into a helpless

mass of dying, wounded, or fugitive creatures, incapable of striking a

blow.

Thus the Germans in the front and the Neapolitans in the rear had been

simultaneously shattered, and rolled together upon the two other

regiments, those of Hachicourt and La Barlotte, which were placed between

them. Nor did these troops offer any better resistance, but were

paralysed and hurled out of existence like the rest. In less than an

hour the Spanish army was demolished. Varax himself lay dead upon the

field, too fortunate not to survive his disgrace. It was hardly more

than daylight on that dull January morning; nine o'clock had scarce

chimed from the old brick steeples of Turnhout, yet two thousand

Spaniards had fallen before the blows of eight hundred Netherlanders, and

there were five hundred prisoners beside. Of Maurice's army not more

than nine or ten were slain. The story sounds like a wild legend. It

was as if the arm of each Netherlander had been nerved by the memory of

fifty years of outrage, as if the spectre of their half-century of crime

had appalled the soul of every Spaniard. Like a thunderbolt the son of

William the Silent smote that army of Philip, and in an instant it lay

blasted on the heath of Tiel. At least it could hardly be called

sagacious generalship on the part of the stadholder. The chances were

all against him, and if instead of Varax those legions had been commanded

that morning by old Christopher Mondragon, there might perhaps have been

another tale to tell. Even as it was, there had been a supreme moment

when the Spanish disaster had nearly been changed to victory. The fight

was almost done, when a small party of Staten' cavalry, who at the

beginning of the action had followed the enemy's horse in its sudden

retreat through the gap, came whirling back over the plain in wild

confusion, pursued by about forty of the enemy's lancers. They swept by

the spot where Maurice, with not more than ten horsemen around him, was

directing and watching the battle, and in vain the prince threw himself

in front of them and strove to check their flight. They were panic-

struck, and Maurice would himself have been swept off the field, had not

Marcellus Bax and Edmont, with half a dozen heavy troopers, come to

the rescue. A grave error had been committed by Parker, who, upon being

ordered by Maurice to cause Louis Laurentz to charge, had himself charged

with the whole reserve and left the stadholder almost alone upon the

field. Thus the culprits--who after pursuing the Spanish cavalry through

the pass had been plundering the enemy's baggage until they were set upon

by the handful left to guard it, and had become fugitives in their turn--

might possibly have caused the lose of the day after the victory had been

won, had there been a man on the Spanish side to take in the situation at

a glance. But it is probable that the rout had been too absolute to

allow of any such sudden turning to account of the serious errors of the

victors. The cavalry, except this handful, had long disappeared, at

least half the infantry lay dead or wounded in the field, while the

remainder, throwing away pipe and matchlock, were running helter-skelter

for their lives.

Besides Prince Maurice himself, to whom the chief credit of the whole

expedition justly belonged, nearly all the commanders engaged obtained

great distinction by their skill and valour. Sir Francis Vere, as usual,

was ever foremost in the thickest of the fray, and had a horse killed

under him. Parker erred by too much readiness to engage, but bore

himself manfully throughout the battle. Hohenlo, Solma, Sidney, Louis

Laurentz, Du Bois, all displayed their usual prowess; but the real hero

of the hour, the personal embodiment of the fortunate madness which

prompted and won the battle, was undoubtedly Marcellus Bax.

Maurice remained an hour or two on the field of battle, and then,

returning towards the village of Turnhout, summoned its stronghold. The

garrison of sixty, under Captain Van der Delf, instantly surrendered.

The victor allowed these troops to go off scot free, saying that there

had been blood enough shed that day. Every standard borne by the

Spaniards in the battle-thirty-eight in number--was taken, besides nearly

all their arms. The banners were sent to the Hague to be hung up in the

great hall of the castle. The dead body of Varax was sent to the

archduke with a courteous letter, in which, however, a categorical

explanation was demanded as to a statement in circulation that Albert

had decided to give the soldiers of the republic no quarter.

No answer being immediately returned, Maurice ordered the five hundred

prisoners to be hanged or drowned unless ransomed within twenty days, and

this horrible decree appears from official documents to be consistent

with the military usages of the period. The arrival of the letter from

the cardinal-archduke, who levied the money for the ransom on the

villagers of Brabant, prevented, however, the execution of the menace,

which could hardly have been seriously intended.

Within a week from the time of his departure from the Hague to engage

in this daring adventure, the stadholder had returned to that little

capital, having achieved a complete success. The enthusiastic

demonstrations throughout the land on account of so signal a victory

can easily be imagined. Nothing like this had ever before been recorded

in the archives of the young commonwealth. There had been glorious

defences of beleaguered cities, where scenes of heroic endurance and

self-sacrifice had been enacted, such as never can be forgotten so long

as the history of human liberty shall endure, but a victory won in the

open field over the most famous legions of Spain and against overwhelming

numbers, was an achievement entirely without example. It is beyond all

doubt that the force under Varax was at least four times as large as that

portion of the States' army which alone was engaged; for Maurice had not

a foot-soldier on the field until the battle was over, save the handful

of musketeers who had followed Vere and Bax at the beginning of the

action.

Therefore it is that this remarkable action merits a much more attentive

consideration than it might deserve, regarded purely as a military

exploit. To the military student a mere cavalry affair, fought out upon

an obscure Brabantine heath between a party of Dutch carabineers and

Spanish pikemen, may seem of little account--a subject fitted by

picturesque costume and animated action for the pencil of a Wouvermanns

or a Terburg, but conveying little instruction. As illustrating a period

of transition in which heavy armoured troopers--each one a human iron-

clad fortress moving at speed and furnished with the most formidable

portable artillery then known--could overcome the resistance of almost

any number of foot-soldiers in light marching gear and armed with the

antiquated pike, the affair may be worthy of a moment's attention; and

for this improvement--itself now as obsolete as the slings and

cataphracts of Roman legions--the world was indebted to Maurice. But the

shock of mighty armies, the manoeuvring of vast masses in one magnificent

combination, by which the fate of empires, the happiness or the misery of

the peoples for generations, may perhaps be decided in a few hours,

undoubtedly require a higher constructive genius than could be displayed

in any such hand-to-hand encounter as that of Turnhout, scientifically

managed as it unquestionably was. The true and abiding interest of the

battle is derived from is moral effect, from its influence on the people

of the Netherlands. And this could scarcely be exaggerated. The nation

was electrified, transformed in an instant. Who now should henceforth

dare to say that one Spanish fighting-man was equal to five or ten

Hollanders? At last the days of Jemmingen and Mooker-heath needed no

longer to be remembered by every patriot with a shudder of shame. Here

at least in the open field a Spanish army, after in vain refusing a

combat and endeavouring to escape, had literally bitten the dust before

one fourth of its own number. And this effect was a permanent one.

Thenceforth for foreign powers to talk of mediation between the republic

and the ancient master, to suggest schemes of reconciliation and of a

return to obedience, was to offer gratuitous and trivial insult, and we

shall very soon have occasion to mark the simple eloquence with which the

thirty-eight Spanish standards of Turnhout, hung up in the old hall of

the Hague, were made to reply to the pompous rhetoric of an interfering

ambassador.

This brief episode was not immediately followed by other military events

of importance in the provinces during what remained of the winter. Very

early in the spring, however, it was probable that the campaign might

open simultaneously in France and on the frontiers of Flanders. Of all

the cities in the north of France there was none, after Rouen, so

important, so populous, so wealthy as Amiens. Situate in fertile fields,

within three days march of Paris, with no intervening forests or other

impediments of a physical nature to free communication, it was the key to

the gates of the capital. It had no garrison, for the population

numbered fifteen thousand men able to bear arms, and the inhabitants

valued themselves on the prowess of their trained militiamen, five

thousand of whom they boasted to be able to bring into the field at an

hour's notice--and they were perfectly loyal to Henry.

One morning in March there came a party of peasants, fifteen or twenty in

number, laden with sacks of chestnuts and walnuts, to the northernmost

gate of the town. They offered them for sale, as usual, to the soldiers

at the guard-house, and chaffered and jested--as boors and soldiers are

wont to do--over their wares. It so happened that in the course of the

bargaining one of the bags became untied, and its contents, much to the

dissatisfaction of the proprietor, were emptied on the ground. There was

a scramble for the walnuts, and much shouting, kicking, and squabbling

ensued, growing almost into a quarrel between the burgher-soldiers and

the peasants. As the altercation was at its height a heavy wagon, laden

with long planks, came towards the gate for the use of carpenters and

architects within the town. The portcullis was drawn up to admit this

lumbering vehicle, but in the confusion caused by the chance medley going

on at the guard-house, the gate dropped again before the wagon had fairly

got through the passage, and remained resting upon the timber with which

it was piled.

At that instant a shrill whistle was heard; and as if by magic the twenty

chestnut-selling peasants were suddenly transformed to Spanish and

Walloon soldiers. armed to the teeth, who were presently reinforced by

as many more of their comrades, who sprang from beneath the plank-work by

which the real contents of the wagon had thus been screened. Captain

Dognano, his brother the sergeant-major, Captain d'Arco, and other

officers of a Walloon regiment stationed in Dourlans, were the leaders of

the little party, and while they were busily occupied in putting the

soldiers of the watch, thus taken unawares, to death, the master-spirit

of the whole adventure suddenly made his appearance and entered the city

at the head of fifteen hundred men. This was an extremely small, yellow,

dried up, energetic Spanish captain, with a long red beard, Hernan Tello

de Porto Carrero by came, governor of the neighbouring city of Dourlens,

who had conceived this plan for obtaining possession of Amiens. Having

sent these disguised soldiers on before him, he had passed the night with

his men in ambush until the signal should sound. The burghers of the

town were mostly in church; none were dreaming of an attack, as men

rarely do--for otherwise how should they ever be surprised--and in half

an hour Amiens was the property of Philip of Spain. There were not very

many lives lost, for the resistance was small, but great numbers were

tortured for ransom and few women escaped outrage. The sack was famous,

for the city was rich and the captors were few in number, so that each

soldier had two or three houses to plunder for his own profit.

When the work was done, the faubourgs were all destroyed, for it was the

intention of the conquerors to occupy the place, which would be a most

convenient basis of operations for any attack upon Paris, and it was

desirable to contract the limits to be defended. Fifteen hundred houses,

many of them beautiful villas surrounded with orchards and pleasure

gardens,--were soon in flames, and afterwards razed to the ground. The

governor of the place, Count St. Pol, managed to effect his escape. His

place was now supplied by the Marquis of Montenegro, an Italian in the

service of the Spanish king. Such was the fate of Amiens in the month of

March, 1597; such the result of the refusal by the citizens to accept the

garrison urged upon them by Henry.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the consternation produced.

throughout France by this astounding and altogether unlooked for event.

"It seemed," said President De Thou, "as if it had extinguished in a

moment the royal majesty and the French name." A few nights later than

the date of this occurrence, Maximilian de Bethune (afterwards Duke of

Sully, but then called Marquis de Rosny) was asleep in his bed in Paris.

He had returned, at past two o'clock in the morning, from a magnificent

ball given by the Constable of France. The capital had been uncommonly

brilliant during the winter with banquets and dances, tourneys and

masquerades, as if to cast a lurid glare over the unutterable misery of

the people and the complete desolation of the country; but this

entertainment--given by Montmorency in honour of a fair dame with whom he

supposed himself desperately in love, the young bride of a very ancient

courtier--surpassed in splendour every festival that had been heard of

for years. De Bethune had hardly lost himself in slumber when he was

startled by Beringen, who, on drawing his curtains in this dead hour of

the night, presented such a ghastly visage that the faithful friend of

Henry instantly imagined some personal disaster to his well-beloved

sovereign. "Is the King dead?" he cried.

Being re-assured as to, this point and told to hasten to the Louvre,

Rosny instantly complied with the command. When he reached the palace he

was admitted at once to the royal bed-chamber, where he found the king in

the most unsophisticated of costumes, striding up and down the room, with

his hands clasped together behind his head, and with an expression of

agony upon his face: Many courtiers were assembled there, stuck all of

them like images against the wall, staring before them in helpless

perplexity.

Henry rushed forward as Rosny entered, and wringing him by the hand,

exclaimed, "Ah, my friend, what a misfortune, Amiens is taken!"

"Very well," replied the financier, with unperturbed visage; "I have just

completed a plan which will restore to your Majesty not only Amiens but

many other places."

The king drew a great sigh of relief and asked for his project.

Rosny, saying that he would instantly go and fetch his papers, left

the apartment for an interval, in order to give vent to the horrible

agitation which he had been enduring and so bravely concealing ever since

the fatal words had been spoken. That a city so important, the key to

Paris, without a moment's warning, without the semblance of a siege,

should thus fall into the hands of the enemy, was a blow as directly to

the heart of De Bethune as it could have been to any other of Henry's

adherents. But while they had been distracting the king by unavailing

curses or wailings, Henry, who had received the intelligence just as he

was getting into bed, had sent for support and consolation to the tried

friend of years, and he now reproachfully contrasted their pusillanimity

with De Rosny's fortitude.

A great plan for reorganising the finances of the kingdom was that very

night submitted by Rosny to the king, and it was wrought upon day by day

thereafter until it was carried into effect.

It must be confessed that the crudities and immoralities which the

project revealed do not inspire the political student of modern days with

so high a conception of the financial genius of the great minister as his

calm and heroic deportment on trying occasions, whether on the battle-

field or in the council-chamber, does of his natural authority over his

fellow-men. The scheme was devised to put money in the king's coffers,

which at that moment were completely empty. Its chief features were to

create a great many new offices in the various courts of justice and

tribunals of administration, all to be disposed of by sale to the highest

bidder; to extort a considerable loan from the chief courtiers and from

the richest burghers in the principal towns; to compel all the leading

peculators--whose name in the public service was legion--to disgorge a

portion of their ill-gotten gains, on being released from prosecution;

and to increase the tax upon salt.

Such a project hardly seems a masterpiece of ethics or political economy,

but it was hailed with rapture by the needy monarch. At once there was

a wild excitement amongst the jobbers and speculators in places. The

creation of an indefinite number of new judgeships and magistracies, to

be disposed of at auction, was a tempting opportunity even in that age of

corruption. One of the most notorious traders in the judicial ermine,

limping Robin de Tours by name, at once made a private visit to Madame de

Rosny and offered seventy-two thousand crowns for the exclusive right to

distribute these new offices. If this could be managed to his

satisfaction, he promised to give her a diamond worth two thousand

crowns, and another, worth six thousand, to her husband. The wife of the

great minister, who did not comprehend the whole amount of the insult,

presented Robin to her husband. She was enlightened, however, as to the

barefaced iniquity of the offer, when she heard De Bethune's indignant.

reply, and saw the jobber limp away, crest-fallen and amazed. That a

financier or a magistrate should decline a bribe or interfere with the

private sale of places, which were after all objects of merchandise, was

to him incomprehensible. The industrious Robin, accordingly, recovering

from his discomfiture, went straightway to the chancellor, and concluded

the same bargain in the council chamber which had been rejected by De

Bethune, with the slight difference that the distribution of the places.

was assigned to the speculator for seventy-five thousand instead of

seventy-two thousand crowns. It was with great difficulty

that De Bethune, who went at once to the king with complaints and

insinuations as to the cleanness of the chancellor's hands, was able to

cancel the operation. The day was fast approaching when the universal

impoverishment of the great nobles and landholders--the result of the

long, hideous, senseless massacres called the wars of religion--was to

open the way for the labouring classes to acquire a property in the soil.

Thus that famous fowl in every pot was to make its appearance, which

vulgar tradition ascribes to the bounty of a king who hated everything

like popular rights, and loved nothing but his own glory and his own

amusement. It was not until the days of his grandchildren and great-

grandchildren that Privilege could renew those horrible outrages on the

People, which were to be avenged by a dread series of wars, massacres,

and crimes, compared to which even the religious conflicts of the

sixteenth century grow pale.

Meantime De Bethune comforted his master with these financial plans,

and assured him in the spirit of prophecy that the King of Spain, now

tottering as it was thought to his grave, would soon be glad to make a

favourable peace with France even if he felt obliged to restore not only

Amiens but every other city or stronghold that he had ever conquered in

that kingdom. Time would soon show whether this prediction were correct

or delusive; but while the secret negotiations between Henry and the Pope

were vigorously proceeding for that peace with Spain which the world in

general and the commonwealth of the Netherlands in particular thought to

be farthest from the warlike king's wishes, it was necessary to set about

the siege of Amiens.

Henry assembled a force of some twelve or fifteen thousand men for that

purpose, while the cardinal-archduke, upon his part, did his best to put

an army in the field in order to relieve the threatened city so recently

acquired by a coarse but successful artifice.

But Albert was in even a worse plight than that in which his great

antagonist found himself. When he had first arrived in the provinces,

his exchequer was overflowing, and he was even supposed to devote a

considerable portion of the military funds to defray the expenses of his

magnificent housekeeping at Brussels. But those halcyon days were over.

A gigantic fraud, just perpetrated by Philip; had descended like a

thunderbolt upon the provinces and upon all commercial Europe, and had

utterly blasted the unfortunate viceroy. In the latter days of the

preceding year the king had issued a general repudiation of his debts.

He did it solemnly, too, and with great religious unction, for it was a

peculiarity of this remarkable sovereign that he was ever wont to

accomplish his darkest crimes, whether murders or stratagems, as if they

were acts of virtue. Perhaps he really believed them to be such, for a

man, before whom so many millions of his fellow worms had been writhing

for half a century in the dust, might well imagine himself a deity.

So the king, on the 20th November, 1596, had publicly revoked all the

assignments, mortgages, and other deeds by which the royal domains;

revenues, taxes, and other public property had been transferred or

pledged for moneys already advanced to merchants, banker, and other

companies or individuals, and formally took them again into his own

possession, on the ground that his exertions in carrying on this long

war to save Christianity from destruction had reduced him to beggary,

while the money-lenders, by charging him exorbitant interest, had all

grown rich at his expense.

This was perfectly simple. There was no attempt to disguise the villany

of the transaction. The massacre of so many millions of Protestants,

the gigantic but puerile attempts to subjugate the Dutch republic, and to

annex France, England, and the German empire to his hereditary dominions,

had been attended with more expense than Philip had calculated upon.

The enormous wealth which a long series of marriages, inheritances,

conquests, and maritime discoveries had heaped upon Spain had been

exhausted by the insane ambition of the king to exterminate heresy

throughout the world, and to make himself the sovereign of one undivided,

universal, catholic monarchy. All the gold and silver of America had not

sufficed for this purpose, and he had seen, with an ever rising

indignation, those very precious metals which, in his ignorance of the

laws of trade, he considered his exclusive property flowing speedily into

the coffers of the merchants of Europe, especially those of the hated

commonwealth of the rebellious Netherlands.

Therefore he solemnly renounced all his contracts, and took God to

witness that it was to serve His Divine will. How else could he hope to

continue his massacre of the Protestants?

The effect of the promulgation of this measure was instantaneous. Two

millions and a half of bills of exchange sold by the Cardinal Albert came

back in one day protested. The chief merchants and bankers of Europe

suspended payment. Their creditors became bankrupt. At the Frankfort

fair there were more failures in one day than there had ever been in all

the years since Frankfort existed. In Genoa alone a million dollars of

interest were confiscated. It was no better in Antwerp; but Antwerp was

already ruined. There was a general howl of indignation and despair upon

every exchange, in every counting-room, in every palace, in every cottage

of Christendom. Such a tremendous repudiation of national debts was

never heard of before. There had been debasements of the currency, petty

frauds by kings upon their unfortunate peoples, but such a crime as this

had never been conceived by human heart before.

The archduke was fain to pawn his jewelry, his plate, his furniture, to

support the daily expenses of his household. Meantime he was to set an

army in the field to relieve a city, beleaguered by the most warlike

monarch in Christendom. Fortunately for him, that prince was in very

similar straits, for the pressure upon the public swindlers and the

auction sales of judicial ermine throughout his kingdom were not as

rapidly productive as had been hoped.

It was precisely at this moment, too, that an incident of another nature

occurred in Antwerp, which did not tend to make the believers in the

possibility of religious or political freedom more in love with the

system of Spain and Rome. Those blood-dripping edicts against heresy

in the Netherlands, of which enough has been said in previous volumes

of this history, and which had caused the deaths, by axe, faggot, halter,

or burial alive, of at least fifty thousand human creatures--however

historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence--had now been,

dormant for twenty years. Their activity had ceased with the

pacification of Ghent; but the devilish spirit which had inspired them

still lived in the persons of the Jesuits, and there were now more

Jesuits in the obedient provinces than there had been for years.

We have seen that Champagny's remedy for the ills the country was

enduring was "more Jesuits." And this, too, was Albert's recipe. Always

"more Jesuits." And now the time had come when the Jesuits thought that

they might step openly with their works into the daylight again. Of late

years they had shrouded themselves in comparative mystery, but from their

seminaries and colleges had gone forth a plentiful company of assassins

against Elizabeth and Henry, Nassau, Barneveld, and others who, whether

avowedly or involuntarily, were prominent in the party of human progress.

Some important murders had already been accomplished, and the prospect

was fair that still others might follow, if the Jesuits persevered.

Meantime those ecclesiastics thought that a wholesome example might

be by the spectacle of a public execution.

Two maiden ladies lived on the north rampart of Antwerp. They had

formerly professed the Protestant religion, and had been thrown into

prison for that crime; but the fear of further persecution, human

weakness, or perhaps sincere conviction, had caused them to renounce

the error of their ways, and they now went to mass. But they had a

maidservant, forty years of age, Anna van den Hove by name, who was

staunch in that reformed faith in which she had been born and bred.

The Jesuits denounced this maid-servant to the civil authority, and

claimed her condemnation and execution under the edicts of 1540, decrees

which every one had supposed as obsolete as the statutes of Draco, which

they had so entirely put to shame.

The sentence having been obtained from the docile and priest-ridden

magistrates, Anna van den Hove was brought to Brussels and informed that

she was at once to be buried alive. At the same time, the Jesuits told

her that by converting herself to the Church she might escape punishment.

When King Henry IV. was summoned to renounce that same Huguenot faith,

of which he was the political embodiment and the military champion, the

candid man answered by the simple demand to be instructed. When the

proper moment came, the instruction was accomplished by an archbishop

with the rapidity of magic. Half an hour undid the work of half a life-

time. Thus expeditiously could religious conversion be effected when an

earthly crown was its guerdon. The poor serving-maid was less open to

conviction. In her simple fanaticism she too talked of a crown, and saw

it descending from Heaven on her poor forlorn head as the reward, not of

apostasy, but of steadfastness. She asked her tormentors how they could

expect her to abandon her religion for fear of death. She had read her

Bible every day, she said, and had found nothing there of the pope or

purgatory, masses, invocation of saints, or the absolution of sins except

through the blood of the blessed Redeemer. She interfered with no one

who thought differently; she quarrelled with no one's religious belief.

She had prayed for enlightenment from Him, if she were in error, and the

result was that she felt strengthened in her simplicty, and resolved to

do nothing against her conscience. Rather than add this sin to the

manifold ones committed by her, she preferred, she said, to die the

death. So Anna van den Hove was led, one fine midsummer morning, to the

hayfield outside of Brussels, between two Jesuits, followed by a number

of a peculiar kind of monks called love-brothers. Those holy men goaded

her as she went, telling her that she was the devil's carrion, and

calling on her to repent at the last moment, and thus save her life and

escape eternal damnation beside. But the poor soul had no ear for them,

and cried out that, like Stephen, she saw the heavens opening, and the

angels stooping down to conduct her far away from the power of the evil

one. When they came to the hay-field they found the pit already dug, and

the maid-servant was ordered to descend into it. The executioner then

covered her with earth up to the waist, and a last summons was made to

her to renounce her errors. She refused, and then the earth was piled

upon her, and the hangman jumped upon the grave till it was flattened and

firm.

Of all the religious murders done in that hideous sixteenth century in

the Netherlands; the burial of the Antwerp servantmaid was the last and

the worst. The worst, because it was a cynical and deliberate attempt to

revive the demon whose thirst for blood had been at last allayed, and who

had sunk into repose. And it was a spasmodic revival only, for, in the

provinces at least, that demon had finished his work.

Still, on the eastern borders of what was called civilization, Turk and

Christian were contending for the mastery. The great battle of Kovesd

had decided nothing, and the crescent still shone over the fortified and

most important Hungarian stronghold of Raab, within arm's length of

Vienna. How rapidly might that fatal and menacing emblem fill its horns,

should it once be planted on the walls of the Imperial capital! It was

not wonderful that a sincere impatience should be felt by all the

frontier States for the termination of the insurrection of the

Netherlands. Would that rebellious and heretical republic only consent

to go out of existence, again bow its stubborn knee to Philip and the

Pope, what a magnificent campaign might be made against Mahomet! The

King of Spain was the only potentate at all comparable in power to the

grand Turk. The King of France, most warlike of men, desired nothing

better, as he avowed, than to lead his brave nobles into Hungary to smite

the unbelievers. Even Prince Maurice, it was fondly hoped, might be

induced to accept a high command in the united armies of Christendom,

and seek for glory by campaigning, in alliance with Philip; Rudolph, and

Henry, against the Ottoman, rather than against his natural sovereign.

Such were the sagacity, the insight, the power of forecasting the future

possessed in those days by monarchs, statesmen, and diplomatists who were

imagining that they held the world's destiny in their hands.

There was this summer a solemn embassy from the emperor to the States-

General proposing mediation referring in the usual conventional

phraseology to the right of kings to command, and to the duty of the

people to submit, and urging the gentle-mindedness and readiness to

forgive which characterised the sovereign of the Netherlands and of

Spain.

And the statesmen of the republic had answered as they always did,

showing with courteous language, irresistible logic, and at, unmerciful

length, that there never had been kings in the Netherlands at all, and

that the gentle-mindedness of Philip had been exhibited in the massacre

of a hundred thousand Netherlanders in various sieges and battles, and in

the murder, under the Duke of Alva alone, of twenty thousand human beings

by the hangman.

They liked not such divine right nor such gentle-mindedness. They

recognised no duty on their part to consent to such a system. Even the

friendly King of Denmark sent a legation for a similar purpose, which was

respectfully but very decidedly allowed to return as it came; but the

most persistent in schemes of interference for the purpose of putting an

end to the effusion of blood in the Netherlands was Sigismund of Poland.

This monarch, who occupied two very incompatible positions, being

sovereign at once of fanatically Protestant Sweden and of orthodox

Poland, and who was, moreover, son-in-law of Archduke Charles of Styria

whose other daughter was soon to be espoused by the Prince of Spain--was

personally and geographically interested in liberating Philip from the

inconvenience of his Netherland war. Only thus could he hope to bring

the Spanish power to the rescue of Christendom against the Turk.

Troubles enough were in store for Sigismund in his hereditary northern

realms, and he was to learn that his intermarriage with the great

Catholic and Imperial house did not enable him to trample out

Protestantism in those hardy Scandinavian and Flemish regions where it

had taken secure root. Meantime he despatched, in solemn mission to the

republic and to the heretic queen, a diplomatist whose name and whose

oratorical efforts have by a caprice of history been allowed to endure to

our times.

Paul Dialyn was solemnly received at the Hague on the 21st July.

A pragmatical fop, attired in a long, magnificent Polish robe, covered

with diamonds and other jewels, he was yet recognised by some of those

present as having been several years before a student at Leyden under a

different name, and with far less gorgeous surroundings. He took up his

position in the council-chamber, in the presence of the stadholder and

the leading members of the States-General, and pronounced a long Latin

oration, in the manner, as it was said, of a monk delivering a sermon

from the pulpit. He kept his eyes steadily fixed on the ceiling, never

once looking at the men whom he was addressing, and speaking in a loud,

nasal, dictatorial tone, not at all agreeable to the audience. He dwelt

in terms of extravagant eulogy on the benignity and gentleness of the

King of Spain--qualities in which he asserted that no prince on earth

could be compared to him--and he said this to the very face of Maurice of

Nassau. That the benignant and gentle king had caused the stadholder's

father to be assassinated, and that he had rewarded the murderer's family

with a patent of nobility, and with an ample revenue taken from the

murdered man's property, appeared of no account to the envoy in the full

sweep of his rhetoric. Yet the reminiscence caused a shudder of disgust

in all who heard him.

He then stated the wish of his master the Polish king to be that, in

regard to the Turk, the provinces might reconcile themselves to their

natural master, who was the most powerful monarch in Christendom, and the

only one able to make head against the common foe. They were solemnly

warned of the enormous power and resources of the great king, with whom

it was hopeless for them to protract a struggle sure to end at last in

their uttermost destruction. It was for kings to issue commands; he

said, and for the people to obey; but Philip was full of sweetness, and

would accord them full forgiveness for their manifold sins against him.

The wish to come to the rescue of Christendom, in this extreme peril from

the Turk, was with him paramount to all other considerations.

Such; in brief, was the substance of the long Latin harangue by which it

was thought possible to induce those sturdy republicans and Calvinists to

renounce their vigorous national existence and to fal on their knees

before the most Catholic king. This was understood to be mediation,

statesmanship, diplomacy, in deference to which the world was to pause

and the course of events to flow backwards. Truly, despots and their

lackeys were destined to learn some rude lessons from that vigorous

little commonwealth in the North Sea, before it should have accomplished

its mission on earth.

The States-General dissembled their disgust, however, for it was not

desirable to make open enemies of Sigismund or Rudolph. They refused to

accept a copy of the oration, but they promised to send him a categorical

answer to it in writing. Meantime the envoy had the honour of walking

about the castle with the stadholder, and, in the course of their

promenade, Maurice pointed to the thirty-eight standards taken at the

battle of Turnhout, which hung from the cedarn rafters of the ancient

banquetting hall. The mute eloquence of those tattered banners seemed a

not illogical reply to the diplomatic Paul's rhetoric in regard to the

hopelessness of a contest with Spanish armies.

Next, Van der Werken--pensionary of Leyden, and a classical scholar--

waited upon the envoy with a Latin reply to his harangue, together

with a courteous letter for Sigismund. Both documents were scathing

denunciations of the policy pursued by the King of Spain and by all his

aiders and abettors, and a distinct but polished refusal to listen to a

single word in favour of mediation or of peace.

Paul Dialyn then received a courteous permission to leave the territory

of the republic, and was subsequently forwarded in a States' vessel of

war to England.

His reception, about a month later, by Queen Elizabeth is an event on

which all English historians are fond of dwelling. The pedant, on being

presented to that imperious and accomplished sovereign, deported himself

with the same ludicrous arrogance which had characterised him at the

Hague. His Latin oration, which had been duly drawn up for him by the

Chancellor of Sweden, was quite as impertinent as his harangue to the

States-General had been, and was delivered with the same conceited air.

The queen replied on the instant in the same tongue. She was somewhat in

a passion, but spoke with majestic moderation?

"Oh, how I have been deceived!" she exclaimed. "I expected an

ambassador, and behold a herald! In all my life I never heard of such

an oration. Your boldness and unadvised temerity I cannot sufficiently

admire. But if the king your master has given you any such thing in

charge--which I much doubt--I believe it is because, being but a young

man, and lately advanced to the crown, not by ordinary succession of

blood, but by election, he understandeth not yet the way of such

affairs." And so on--for several minutes longer.

Never did envoy receive such a setting down from sovereign.

"God's death, my lords!" said the queen to her ministers; as she

concluded, "I have been enforced this day to scour up my old Latin that

hath lain long in rusting."

This combination of ready wit, high spirit, and good Latin, justly

excited the enthusiasm of the queen's subjects, and endeared her still

more to every English heart. It may, however, be doubted whether the

famous reply was in reality so entirely extemporaneous as it has usually

been considered. The States-General had lost no time in forwarding to

England a minute account of the proceedings of Paul Dialyn at the Hague,

together with a sketch of his harangue and of the reply on behalf of the

States. Her Majesty and her counsellors therefore, knowing that the same

envoy was on his way to England with a similar errand, may be supposed to

have had leisure to prepare the famous impromptu. Moreover, it is

difficult to understand, on the presumption that these classic utterances

were purely extemporaneous, how they have kept their place in all

chronicles and histories from that day to the present, without change of

a word in the text. Surely there was no stenographer present to take

down the queen's words as they fell from her lips.

The military events of the year did not testify to a much more successful

activity on the part of the new league in the field than it had displayed

in the sphere of diplomacy. In vain did the envoy of the republic urge

Henry and his counsellors to follow up the crushing blow dealt to the

cardinal at Turnhout by vigorous operations in conjunction with the

States' forces in Artois and Hainault. For Amiens had meantime been

taken, and it was now necessary for the king to employ all his energy and

all his resources to recover that important city. So much damage to the

cause of the republic and of the new league had the little yellow Spanish

captain inflicted in an hour, with his bags of chestnuts and walnuts.

The siege of Amiens lasted nearly six months, and was the main event of

the campaign, so far as Henry was concerned. It is true--as the reader

has already seen, and as will soon be more clearly developed--that

Henry's heart had been fixed on peace from the moment that he consented

in conjunction with the republic to declare war, and that he had entered

into secret and separate negotiations for that purpose with the agents of

Philip so soon as he had bound himself by solemn covenant with Elizabeth

to have no negotiations whatever with him except with her full knowledge

and consent.

The siege of Amiens, however, was considered a military masterpiece, and

its whole progress showed the revolution which the stadholder of Holland

had already effected in European warfare. Henry IV. beleaguered Amiens

as if he were a pupil of Maurice, and contemporaries were enthusiastic

over the science, the patience, the inventive ingenuity which were at

last crowned with success. The heroic Hernan Tello de Porto Carrero was

killed in a sortie during the defence of the place which he had so

gallantly won, and when the city was surrendered to the king on the 19th

of September it was stipulated in the first article of the capitulation

that the tomb, epitaph, and trophies, by which his memory was honoured in

the principal church, should not be disturbed, and that his body might be

removed whenever and whither it seemed good to his sovereign. In vain

the cardinal had taken the field with an army of eighteen thousand foot

and fifteen hundred light cavalry. The king had learned so well to

entrench himself and to moderate his ardour for inopportune pitched

battles, that the relieving force could find, no occasion to effect its

purpose. The archduke retired. He came to Amiens like a soldier, said

Henry, but he went back like a priest. Moreover, he was obliged to

renounce, besides the city, a most tempting prize which he thought that

he had secured within the city. Alexander Farnese, in his last French

campaign, had procured and sent to his uncle the foot of St. Philip and

the head of St. Lawrence; but what was Albert's delight when he learned

that in Amiens cathedral there was a large piece of the head of John the

Baptist! "There will be a great scandal about it in this kingdom," he

wrote to Philip, "if I undertake to transport it out of the country, but

I will try to contrive it as your Majesty desires."

But the military events of the year prevented the cardinal from

gratifying the king in regard to these choice curiosities.

After the reduction of the city Henry went a considerable distance with

his army towards the frontier of Flanders, in order to return, as he

said, "his cousin's visit." But the recovery of Amiens had placed too

winning a card in the secret game which he was then playing to allow him

to push his nominal adversary to extremities.

The result, suspected very early in the year by the statesmen of the

republic, was already very plainly foreshadowing itself as the winter

advanced.

Nor had the other two members of the league affected much in the field.

Again an expedition had been fitted forth under Essex against the Spanish

coast to return the compliment which Philip had intended with the unlucky

armada under Santa Gadea; and again Sir Francis Vere, with two thousand

veterans from the Netherlands, and the Dutch admirals, with ten ships of

war and a large number of tenders and transports, had faithfully taken

part in the adventure.

The fleet was tempest-tossed for ten days, during which it reached the

threatened coast and was blown off again. It returned at last into the

English ports, having accomplished nothing, and having expended

superfluously a considerable amount of money and trouble. Essex, with a

few of the vessels, subsequently made a cruise towards the Azores, but,

beyond the capture of a Spanish merchantman or two, gained no glory and

inflicted no damage.

Nothing could be feebler than the military operations of the three

confederated powers ever since they had so solemnly confederated

themselves.

Sick at heart with the political intrigues of his allies which had--

brought a paralysis upon his arms which the blows of the enemy could

hardly have effected, Maurice took the field in August: for an autumnal

campaign on the eastern frontier of the republic. Foiled in his efforts

for a combined attack by the whole force of the league upon Philip's

power in the west, he thought it at least expedient to liberate the

Rhine, to secure the important provinces of Zutphen, Gelderland, and

Overyssel from attack, and to provide against the dangerous intrigues and

concealed warfare carried on by Spain in the territories of the mad Duke

of Juliers, Clever and Berg. For the seeds of the Thirty Years' War of

Germany were already sown broadcast in those fatal duchies, and it was

the determination of the agents of Spain to acquire the mastery of that

most eligible military position, that excellent 'sedes belli,' whenever

Protestantism was to be assailed in England, the Netherlands, or Germany.

Meantime the Hispaniolated counsellors of Duke John had strangled--as it

was strongly suspected--his duchess, who having gone to bed in perfect

health one evening was found dead in her bed next morning, with an ugly

mark on her throat; and it was now the purpose of these statesmen to

find a new bride for their insane sovereign in the ever ready and ever

orthodox house of Lorrain. And the Protestant brothers-in-law and

nephews and nieces were making every possible combination in order to

check such dark designs, and to save these important territories from

the ubiquitous power of Spain.

The stadholder had also family troubles at this period. His sister

Emilia had conceived a desperate passion for Don Emmanuel, the pauper

son of the forlorn pretender to Portugal, Don Antonio, who had at last

departed this life. Maurice was indignant that a Catholic, an outcast,

and, as it was supposed, a bastard, should dare to mate with the daughter

of William of Orange-Nassau; and there were many scenes of tenderness,

reproaches, recriminations, and 'hysterica passio,' in which not only the

lovers, the stadholder and his family, but also the high and mighty

States-General, were obliged to enact their parts. The chronicles are

filled with the incidents, which, however, never turned to tragedy, nor

even to romance, but ended, without a catastrophe, in a rather insipid

marriage. The Princess Emilia remained true both to her religion and her

husband during a somewhat obscure wedded life, and after her death Don

Emmanuel found means to reconcile himself with the King of Spain and to

espouse, in second nuptials, a Spanish lady. On the 4th of August,

Maurice arrived at Arnhem with a force of seven thousand foot and twelve

hundred horse. Hohenlo was with him, and William Lewis, and there was

yet another of the illustrious house of Nassau in the camp, Frederick

Henry, a boy in his thirteenth year, the youngest born of William the

Silent, the grandson of Admiral de Coligny, now about; in this his first

campaign, to take the first step in a long and noble career.

Having reduced the town and castle of Alphen, the stadholder came before

Rheinberg, which he very expeditiously invested. During a preliminary

skirmish William Lewis received a wound in the leg, while during the

brief siege Maurice had a narrow escape from death, a cannon-ball passing

through his tent and over his head as he lay taking a brief repose upon

his couch.

On the 19th, Rheinberg, the key to that portion of the river,

surrendered. On the 31st the stadholder opened his batteries upon the

city of Meurs, which capitulated on the 2nd of September; the commandant,

Andrew Miranda, stipulating that he should carry off an old fifty-

pounder, the only piece of cannon in the place. Maurice gave his

permission with a laugh, begging Miranda not to batter down any cities

with his big gun.

On the 8th September the stadholdet threw a bridge over the Rhine, and

crossing that river and the Lippe, came on the 11th before Grol. There

was no Christopher Mondragon now in his path to check his progress and

spoil his campaign, so that in seventeen days the city, being completely

surrounded with galleries and covered ways up to its walls, surrendered.

Count van Stirum, royal governor of the place, dined with the stadholder

on that day, and the garrison, from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred

strong; together with such of the townsfolk as chose to be subjects of

Philip rather than citizens of the republic, were permitted to depart in

peace.

On the 9th October the town and castle of Brevoort were taken by storm

and the town was burned.

On the 18th October, Maurice having summoned Enschede, the commandant

requested permission to examine the artillery by which it was proposed to

reduce the city. Leave being granted, two captains were deputed

accordingly as inspectors, who reported that resistance was useless.

The place accordingly capitulated at once.

Here, again, was an improvement on the heroic practice of Alva and

Romero.

On the 21st and 22nd October, Ootmarsum and Oldenzaal were taken, and on

the 28th the little army came before Lingen. This important city

surrendered after a fortnight's siege.

Thus closed a sagacious, business-like, three-months' campaign, in the

course of which the stadholder, although with a slender force, had by

means of his excellent organization and his profound practical science,

achieved very considerable results. He had taken nine strongly-fortified

cities and five castles, opened the navigation of the Rhine, and

strengthened the whole eastern bulwarks of the republic. He was censured

by the superficial critics of the old school for his humanity towards the

conquered garrisons. At least it was thought quite superfluous to let

these Spanish soldiers go scot free. Five thousand veterans had thus

been liberated to swell the ranks of the cardinal's army, but the result

soon proved the policy of Maurice to be, in many ways, wholesome. The

great repudiation by Philip, and the consequent bankruptcy of Alberta

converted large numbers of the royal troops into mutineers, and these

garrisons from the eastern frontier were glad to join in the game.

After the successful siege of Hulst in the previous year the cardinal had

reduced the formidable mutiny which had organized itself at Tirlemont and

Chapelle in the days of his luckless predecessor. Those rebels had been

paid off and had mainly returned to Italy and other lands to spend their

money. But soon a new rebellion in all the customary form's established

itself in Antwerp citadel during the temporary absence of Mexia, the

governor, and great was the misery of the unhappy burghers thus placed at

the mercy of the guns of that famous pentagon. They were obliged to

furnish large sums to the whole garrison, paying every common foot-

soldier twelve stivers a day and the officers in proportion, while the

great Eletto demanded, beside his salary, a coach and six, a state bed

with satin curtains and fine linen, and the materials for banquetting

sumptuously every day. At the slightest demur to these demands the

bombardment from the citadel would begin, and the accurate artillery

practice of those experienced cannoneers soon convinced the loyal

citizens of the propriety of the arrangement. The example spread. The

garrison of Ghent broke into open revolt, and a general military

rebellion lasted for more than a year.

While the loyal cities of the obedient provinces were thus enjoying the

fruits of their loyalty and obedience, the rebellious capital of the

republic was receiving its stadholder with exuberant demonstrations of

gratitude. The year, begun with the signal victory of Turnhout, had

worthily terminated, so far as military events were concerned, with the

autumnal campaign on the Rhine, and great were the rejoicings throughout

the little commonwealth.

Thus, with diminished resources, had the republic been doing its share of

the work which the anti-Spanish league had been called into existence to

accomplish. But, as already intimated, this league was a mere fraud upon

the Netherlands, which their statesmen were not slow in discovering. Of

course it was the object of Philip and of the pope to destroy this

formidable triple alliance as soon as formed, and they found potent

assistance, not only in Henry's counsellors, but in the bosom of that

crafty monarch himself. Clement hated Philip as much as he feared him,

so that the prospect both of obtaining Henry as a counterpoise to his own

most oppressive and most Catholic protector, and of breaking up the great

convert's alliance with the heretic queen and the rebellious republic,

was a most tempting one to his Holiness. Therefore he employed,

indefatigably, the matchless powers of intrigue possessed by Rome to

effect this great purpose. As for Elizabeth, she was weary of the war,

most anxious to be reimbursed her advances to the States, and profoundly

jealous of the rising commercial and naval greatness of