Chapter I: Part 1

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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. 66

History of the United Netherlands, 1594

CHAPTER XXX.

Prince Maurice lays siege to Gertruydenberg--Advantages of the new
system of warfare--Progress of the besieging operations--Superiority
of Maurice's manoeuvres--Adventure of Count Philip of Nassau--
Capitulation of Gertruydenberg--Mutiny among the Spanish troops--
Attempt of Verdugo to retake Coeworden--Suspicions of treason in the
English garrison at Ostend--Letter of Queen Elizabeth to Sir Edward
Norris on the subject--Second attempt on Coeworden--Assault on
Groningen by Maurice--Second adventure of Philip of Nassau--Narrow
escape of Prince Maurice--Surrender of Groningen--Particulars of the
siege--Question of religious toleration--Progress of the United
Netherlands--Condition of the "obedient" Netherlands--Incompetency
of Peter Mansfeld as Governor--Archduke Ernest, the successor of
Farnese--Difficulties of his position--His unpopularity--Great
achievements of the republicans--Triumphal entry of Ernest into
Brussels and Antwerp--Magnificence of the spectacle--Disaffection of
the Spanish troops--Great military rebellion--Philip's proposal to
destroy the English fleet--His assassination plans--Plot to poison
Queen Elizabeth--Conspiracies against Prince Maurice--Futile
attempts at negotiation--Proposal of a marriage between Henry and
the Infanta--Secret mission from Henry to the King of Spain--Special
dispatch to England and the Staten--Henry obtains further aid from
Queen Elizabeth and the States--Council--Anxiety of the Protestant
countries to bring about a war with Spain--Aspect of affairs at the
close of the year 1594.

While Philip's world-empire seemed in one direction to be so rapidly fading into cloudland there were substantial possessions of the Spanish crown which had been neglected in Brabant and Friesland.

Two very important cities still held for the King of Spain within the territories of what could now be fairly considered the United Dutch Republic--St. Gertruydenberg and Groningen.

Early in the spring of 1593, Maurice had completed his preparations for a siege, and on the 24th March appeared before Gertruydenberg.

It was a stately, ancient city, important for its wealth, its strength, and especially for its position. For without its possession even the province of Holland could hardly consider itself mistress of its own little domains. It was seated on the ancient Meuse, swollen as it approached the sea almost to the dimension of a gulf, while from the south another stream, called the Donge, very brief in its course, but with considerable depth of water, came to mingle itself with the Meuse, exactly under the walls of the city.

The site of the place was so low that it was almost hidden and protected by its surrounding dykes. These afforded means of fortification, which had been well improved. Both by nature and art the city was one of the strongholds of the Netherlands.

Maurice had given the world a lesson in the beleaguering science at the siege of Steenwyk, such as had never before been dreamt of; but he was resolved that the operations before Gertruydenberg should constitute a masterpiece.

Nothing could be more beautiful as a production of military art, nothing, to the general reader, more insipid than its details.

On the land side, Hohenlo's headquarters were at Ramsdonck, a village about a German mile to the east of Gertruydenberg. Maurice himself was established on the west side of the city. Two bridges constructed across the Donge facilitated the communications between the two camps, while great quantities of planks and brush were laid down across the swampy roads to make them passable for waggon-trains and artillery. The first care of the young general, whose force was not more than twenty thousand men, was to protect himself rather than to assail the town.

His lines extended many miles in a circuit around the place, and his forts, breastworks, and trenches were very numerous.

The river was made use of as a natural and almost impassable ditch of defence, and windmills were freely employed to pump water into the shallows in one direction, while in others the outer fields, in quarters whence a relieving force might be expected, were turned into lakes by the same machinery. Farther outside, a system of palisade work of caltrops and man-traps--sometimes in the slang of the day called Turkish ambassadors--made the country for miles around impenetrable or very disagreeable to cavally. In a shorter interval than would have seemed possible, the battlements and fortifications of the besieging army had risen like an exhalation out of the morass. The city of Gertruydenberg was encompassed by another city as extensive and apparently as impregnable as itself. Then, for the first time in that age, men thoroughly learned the meaning of that potent implement the spade.

Three thousand pioneers worked night and day with pickaxe and shovel. The soldiers liked the business; for every man so employed received his ten stivers a day additional wages, punctually paid, and felt moreover that every stioke was bringing the work nearer to its conclusion.

The Spaniards no longer railed at Maurice as a hedger and ditcher. When he had succeeded in bringing a hundred great guns to bear upon the beleaguered city they likewise ceased to sneer at heavy artillery.

The Kartowen and half Kartowen were no longer considered "espanta vellacos."

Meantime, from all the country round, the peasants flocked within the lines. Nowhere in Europe were provisions so plentiful and cheap as in the Dutch camp. Nowhere was a readier market for agricultural products, prompter payment, or more perfect security for the life and property of non-combatants. Not so much as a hen's egg was taken unlawfully. The country people found themselves more at ease within Maurice's lines than within any other part of the provinces, obedient or revolted. They ploughed and sowed and reaped at their pleasure, and no more striking example was ever afforded of the humanizing effect of science upon the barbarism of war, than in this siege of Gertruydenberg.

Certainly it was the intention of the prince to take his city, and when he fought the enemy it was his object to kill; but, as compared with the bloody work which Alva, and Romero, and Requesens, and so many others had done in those doomed provinces, such war-making as this seemed almost like an institution for beneficent and charitable purposes.

Visitors from the neighbourhood, from other provinces, from foreign countries, came to witness the extraordinary spectacle, and foreign generals repaired to the camp of Maurice to take practical lessons in the new art of war.

Old Peter Ernest Mansfeld, who was nominal governor of the Spanish Netherlands since the death of Farnese, rubbed his eyes and stared aghast when the completeness of the preparations for reducing the city at last broke in upon his mind. Count Fuentes was the true and confidential regent however until the destined successor to Parma should arrive; but Fuentes, although he had considerable genius for assassination, as will hereafter appear, and was an experienced and able commander of the old- fashioned school, was no match for Maurice in the scientific combinations on which the new system was founded.

In vain did the superannuated Peter call aloud upon his sofa and governor, Count Charles, to assist him in this dire dilemma. That artillery general had gone with a handful of Germans, Walloons; and other obedient Netherlanders--too few to accomplish anything abroad, too many to be spared from the provinces--to besiege Noyon in France. But what signified the winning or losing of such a place as Noyon at exactly the moment when the Prince of Bearne, assisted by the able generalship of the Archbishop of Bourges, had just executed those famous flanking movements in the churches of St. Denis and Chartres, by which the world-empire had been effectually shattered, and Philip and the Pope completely out- manoeuvred.

Better that the five thousand fighters under Charles Mansfeld had been around Gertruydenberg. His aged father did what he could. As many men as could be spared from the garrison of Antwerp and its neighbourhood were collected; but the Spaniards were reluctant to march, except under old Mondragon. That hero, who had done much of the hardest work, and had fought in most of the battles of the century, was nearly as old as the century. Being now turned of ninety, he thought best to keep house in Antwerp Castle: Accordingly twelve thousand foot and three thousand horse took the field under the more youthful Peter Ernest? But Peter Ernest, when his son was not there to superintend his operations, was nothing but a testy octogenarian, while the two together were not equal to the little finger of Farnese, whom Philip would have displaced, had he not fortunately died.

"Nothing is to be expected out of this place but toads and poison," wrote Ybarra in infinite disgust to the two secretaries of state at Madrid. "I have done my best to induce Fuentes to accept that which the patent secured him, and Count Peter is complaining that Fuentes showed him the patent so late only to play him a trick. There is a rascally pack of meddlers here, and the worst of them all are the women, whom I particularly give to the devil. There is no end to the squabbles as to who shall take the lead in relieving Gertruydenberg."

Mansfeld at last came ponderously up in the neighbourhood of Turnhout. There was a brilliant little skirmish, in the, neighbourhood of this place, in which a hundred and fifty Dutch cavalry under the famous brothers Bax defeated four hundred picked lancers of Spain and Italy. But Mansfeld could get nothing but skirmishes. In vain he plunged about among the caltrops and man-traps. In vain he knocked at the fortifications of Hohenlo on the east and of Maurice on the west. He found them impracticable, impregnable, obdurate. It was Maurice's intention to take his town at as small sacrifice of life as possible. A trumpet was sent on some trifling business to Mansfeld, in reply to a communication made by the general to Maurice.

"Why does your master," said the choleric veteran to the trumpeter, "why does Prince Maurice, being a lusty young commander as he is, not come out of his trenches into the open field and fight me like a man, where honour and fame await him?"

"Because my master," answered the trumpeter, "means to live to be a lusty old commander like your excellency, and sees no reason to-day to give you an advantage."

At this the bystanders laughed, rather at the expense of the veteran.

Meantime there were not many incidents within the lines or within the city to vary the monotony of the scientific siege.

On the land side, as has been seen, the city was enclosed and built out of human sight by another Gertruydenberg. On the wide estuary of the Meuse, a chain of war ships encircled the sea-front, in shape of a half moon, lying so close to each other that it was scarcely possible even for a messenger to swim out of a dark night.

The hardy adventurers who attempted that feat with tidings of despair were almost invariably captured.

This blockading fleet took regular part in the daily cannonade; while, on the other hand, the artillery practice from the landbatteries of Maurice and Hohenlo was more perfect than anything ever known before in the Netherlands or France.

And the result was that in the course of the cannonade which lasted nearly ninety days, not more than four houses in the city escaped injury. The approaches were brought, every hour, nearer and nearer to the walls. With subterranean lines converging in the form of the letter Y, the prince had gradually burrowed his way beneath the principal bastion.

Hohenlo, representative of the older school of strategy, had on one occasion ventured to resist the authority of the commander-in-chief. He had constructed a fort at Ramsdonck. Maurice then commanded the erection of another, fifteen hundred yards farther back. It was as much a part of his purpose to defend himself against the attempts of Mansfeld's relieving force, as to go forward against the city. Hohenlo objected that it would be impossible to sustain himself against a sudden attack in so isolated a position. Maurice insisted. In the midst of the altercation Hohenlo called to the men engaged in throwing up the new fortifications: "Here, you captains and soldiers," he cried, "you are delivered up here to be butchered. You may drop work and follow me to the old fort."

"And I swear to you," said Maurice quietly, "that the first man who moves from this spot shall be hanged."

No one moved. The fort was completed and held to the and; Hohenlo sulkily acquiescing in the superiority which this stripling--his former pupil--had at last vindicated over all old-fashioned men-at-arms.

From the same cause which was apt to render Hohenlo's services inefficient, the prince was apt to suffer inconvenience in the persons placed in still nearer relation to himself. Count Philip of Nassau, brother of the wise and valiant Lewis William, had already done much brilliant campaigning against the Spaniards both in France and the provinces. Unluckily, he was not only a desperate fighter but a mighty drinker, and one day, after a dinner-party and potent carouse at Colonel Brederode's quarters, he thought proper, in doublet and hose, without armour of any kind, to mount his horse, in order to take a solitary survey of the enemy's works. Not satisfied with this piece of reconnoitering--which he effected with much tipsy gravity, but probably without deriving any information likely to be of value to the commanding general--he then proceeded to charge in person a distant battery. The deed was not commendable in a military point of view. A fire was opened upon him at long range so soon as he was discovered, and at the same time the sergeant-major of his regiment and an equerry of Prince Maurice started in pursuit, determined to bring him off if possible, before his life had been thus absurdly sacrificed. Fortunately for him they came to the rescue in time, pulled him from his horse, and succeeded in bringing him away unharmed. The sergeant-major, however, Sinisky by name, while thus occupied in preserving the count's life, was badly wounded in the leg by a musket-shot from the fort; which casualty was the only result of this after-dinner assault.

As the siege proceeded, and as the hopes of relief died away, great confusion began to reign within the city. The garrison, originally of a thousand veterans, besides burgher militia, had been much diminished. Two commandants of the place, one after another, had lost their lives. On the 1st of June, Governor De Masieres, Captain Mongyn, the father-confessor of the garrison, and two soldiers, being on the top of the great church tower taking observations, were all brought down with one cannon-shot. Thus the uses of artillery were again proved to be something more than to scare cowards.

The final result seemed to have been brought about almost by accident, if accident could be admitted as a factor in such accurate calculations as those of Maurice. On the 24th June Captains Haen and Bievry were relieving watch in the trenches near the great north ravelin of the town --a bulwark which had already been much undermined from below and weakened above. Being adventurous officers, it occurred to them suddenly to scale the wall of the fort and reconnoitre what was going on in the town. It was hardly probable that they would come back alive from the expedition, but they nevertheless threw some planks across the ditch, and taking a few soldiers with them, climbed cautiously up. Somewhat to his own surprise, still more to that of the Spanish sentinels, Bievry in a few minutes found himself within the ravelin. He was closely followed by Captain Haen, Captain Kalf, and by half a company of soldiers. The alarm was given. There was a fierce hand-to-hand struggle. Sixteen of the bold stormers fell, and nine of the garrison of the fort. The rest fled into the city. The governor of the place, Captain Gysant, rushing to the rescue without staying to put on his armour, was killed. Count Solms, on the other hand, came from the besieging camp into the ravelin to investigate the sudden uproar. To his profound astonishment he was met there, after a brief interval, by a deputation from the city, asking for terms of surrender. The envoys had already been for some little time looking in vain for a responsible person with whom to treat. When Maurice was informed of the propositions he thought it at first a trick; for he had known nothing of the little adventure of the three captains. Soon afterwards he came into a battery whither the deputies had been brought, and the terms of capitulation were soon agreed upon.

Next day the garrison were allowed to go out with sidearms and personal baggage, and fifty waggons were lent them by the victor to bring their wounded men to Antwerp.

Thus was Gertruydenberg surrendered in the very face of Peter Mansfeld, who only became aware of the fact by the salvos of artillery fired in honour of the triumph, and by the blaze of illumination which broke forth over camp and city.

The sudden result was an illustration of the prince's perfect arrangements. When Maurice rode into the town, he found it strong enough and sufficiently well provisioned to have held out many a long day. But it had been demonstrated to the besieged that relief was impossible, and that the surrender on one day or another, after the siege operations should be brought to their close, was certain. The inexorable genius of the commander--skilled in a science which to the coarser war- makers of that age seemed almost superhuman--hovered above them like a fate. It was as well to succumb on the 24th June as to wait till the 24th July.

Moreover the great sustaining principle--resistance to the foreigner-- which had inspired the deeds of daring, the wonders of endurance, in the Dutch cities beleaguered so remorselessly by the Spaniard twenty years earlier in the century, was wanting.

In surrendering to the born Netherlander--the heroic chieftain of the illustrious house of Nassau--these Netherlanders were neither sullying their flag nor injuring their country. Enough had been done for military honour in the gallant resistance, in which a large portion of the garrison had fallen. Nor was that religious superstition so active within the city, which three years before had made miracles possible in Paris when a heretic sovereign was to be defied by his own subjects. It was known that even if the public ceremonies of the Catholic Church were likely to be suspended for a time after the surrender, at least the rights of individual conscience and private worship within individual households would be tolerated, and there was no papal legate with fiery eloquence persuading a city full of heroic dupes that it was more virtuous for men or women to eat their own children than to forego one high mass, or to wink at a single conventicle.

After all, it was no such bitter hardship for the citizens of Gertruydenberg to participate in the prosperity of the rising and thriving young republic, and to enjoy those municipal and national liberties which her sister cities had found so sweet.

Nothing could be calmer or more reasonable than such a triumph, nothing less humiliating or less disastrous than such a surrender.

The problem was solved, the demonstration was made. To open their gates to the soldiers of the Union was not to admit the hordes of a Spanish commander with the avenging furies of murder, pillage, rape, which ever followed in their train over the breach of a captured city.

To an enemy bated or dreaded to the uttermost mortal capacity, that well- fortified and opulent city might have held out for months, and only when the arms and the fraud of the foe without, and of famine within, had done their work, could it have bowed its head to the conqueror, and submitted to the ineffable tortures which would be the necessary punishment of its courage.

Four thousand shots had been fired from the siege-guns upon the city, and three hundred upon the relieving force.

The besieging army numbered in all nine thousand one hundred and fifty men of all arms, and they lost during the eighty-five days' siege three hundred killed and four hundred wounded.

After the conclusion of these operations, and the thorough remodelling of the municipal government of the important city thus regained to the republic, Maurice occupied himself with recruiting and refreshing his somewhat exhausted little army. On the other hand, old Count Mansfeld, dissatisfied with the impotent conclusion to his attempts, retired to Brussels to be much taunted by the insolent Fuentes. He at least escaped very violent censure on the part of his son Charles, for that general, after his superfluous conquest of Noyon, while returning towards the Netherlands, far too tardily to succour Gertruydenberg, had been paralyzed in all his movements by a very extensive mutiny which broke out among the Spanish troops in the province of Artois. The disorder went through all its regular forms. A town was taken, an Eletto was appointed. The country-side was black-mailed or plundered, and the rebellion lasted some thirteen months. Before it was concluded there was another similar outbreak among the Italians, together with the Walloons and other obedient Netherlanders in Hainault, who obliged the city of Mons to collect nine hundred florins a day for them. The consequence of these military rebellions was to render the Spanish crown almost powerless during the whole year, within the provinces nominally subject to its sway. The cause--as always--was the non-payment of these veterans' wages, year after year. It was impossible for Philip, with all the wealth of the Indies and Mexico pouring through the Danaid sieve of the Holy League in France, to find the necessary funds to save the bronzed and war-worn instruments of his crimes in the Netherlands from starving and from revolt.

Meantime there was much desultory campaigning in Friesland. Verdugo and Frederic van den Berg picked up a few cities, and strong places which had thrown off their allegiance September, to the king--Auerzyl, Schlochteren, Winschoten, Wedde, Ootmarzum--and invested the much more important town of Coeworden, which Maurice had so recently reduced to the authority of the Union. Verdugo's force was insufficient, however, and he had neither munitions nor provisions for a long siege. Winter was coming on; and the States, aware that he would soon be obliged to retire from before the well-garrisoned and fortified place, thought it unnecessary to interfere with him. After a very brief demonstration the Portuguese veteran was obliged to raise the siege.

There were also certain vague attempts made by the enemy to re-possess himself of those most important seaports which had been pledged to the English queen. On a previous page the anxiety has been indicated with which Sir Robert Sydney regarded the withdrawal of the English troops in the Netherlands for the sake of assisting the French king. This palpable breach of the treaty had necessarily weakened England's hold on the affections of the Netherlanders, and awakened dark suspicions that treason might be impending at Flushing or Ostend. The suspicions were unjust--so far as the governors of those places were concerned--for Sydney and Norris were as loyal as they were intelligent and brave; but the trust in their characters was not more implicit than it had been in that of Sir William Stanley before the commission of his crime. It was now believed that the enemy was preparing for a sudden assault upon Ostend, with the connivance, it was feared, of a certain portion of the English garrison. The intelligence was at once conveyed to her Majesty's Government by Sir Edward Norris, and they determined to take a lesson from past experience. Norris was at once informed that in view of the attack which he apprehended, his garrison should be strengthened by five hundred men under Sir Conyers Clifford from certain companies in Flushing, and that other reinforcements should be sent from the English troops in Normandy. The governor was ordered to look well after his captains and soldiers, to remind them, in the queen's name, of their duty to herself and to the States, to bid all beware of sullying the English name, to make close investigations into any possible intrigues of the garrison with the enemy, and, should any culprits be found, to bring them at once to condign punishment.

The queen, too, determined that there should be no blighting of English honour, if she could prevent it by her warnings, indited with her own hand a characteristic letter to Sir Edward Norris, to accompany the more formal despatch of Lord Burghley. Thus it ran "Ned!--

"Though you have some tainted sheep among your flock, let not that serve for excuse for the rest. We trust you are so carefully regarded as nought shall be left for your excuses, but either ye lack heart or want will; for of fear we will not make mention, as that our soul abhors, and we assure ourselves you will never discern suspicion of it. Now or never let for the honour of us and our nation, each man be so much of bolder heart as their cause is good, and their honour must be according, remembering the old goodness of our God, who never yet made us fail His needful help, who ever bless you as I with my prince's hand beseech Him."

The warnings and preparations proved sufficiently effective, and the great schemes with which the new royal governor of the Netherlands was supposed to be full--a mere episode in which was the conquest of Ostend-- seemed not so formidable as their shadows had indicated. There was, in the not very distant future, to be a siege of Ostend, which the world would not soon forget, but perhaps the place would not yield to a sudden assault. Its resistance, on the contrary, might prove more protracted than was then thought possible. But the chronicle of events must not be anticipated. For the present, Ostend was safe.

Early in the following spring, Verdugo again appeared before Coeworden in force. It was obvious that the great city of Groningen, the mistress of all the north-eastern provinces, would soon be attacked, and Coeworden was the necessary base of any operations against the place. Fortunately for the States, William Lewis had in the preceding autumn occupied and fortified the only avenue through the Bourtange morass, so that when Verdugo sat down before Coeworden, it was possible for Maurice, by moving rapidly, to take the royal governor at a disadvantage.

Verdugo had eight thousand picked troops, including two thousand Walloon cavalry, troopers who must have been very formidable, if they were to be judged by the prowess of one of their captains, Gaucier by name. This obedient Netherlander was in the habit of boasting that he had slain four hundred and ten men with his own hand, including several prisoners and three preachers; but the rest of those warriors were not so famed for their martial achievements.

The peril, however, was great, and Prince Maurice, trifling not a moment, threw himself with twelve thousand infantry, Germans, Frisians, Scotch, English, and Hollanders, and nearly two thousand horse, at once upon the road between the Vecht and the Bourtange morass. On the 6th of May, Verdugo found the States' commander-in-chief trenched and impregnable, squarely established upon his line of communications. He reconnoitred, called a council of war, and decided that to assail him were madness; to remain, destruction. On the night of the 6th of May, he broke up his camp and stole away in the darkness, without sound of drum or trumpet, leaving all his fortifications and burning all his huts.

Thus had Maurice, after showing the world how strong places were to be reduced, given a striking exhibition of the manner in which they were to be saved.

Coeworden, after thirty-one weeks' investment, was relieved.

The stadholder now marched upon Groningen. This city was one of the most splendid and opulent of all the Netherland towns. Certainly it should have been one of the most ancient in Europe, since it derived its name-- according to that pains-taking banker, Francis Guicciardini--"from Grun, a Trojan gentleman," who, nevertheless, according to Munster, was "a Frenchman by birth."--"Both theories, however, might be true," added the conscientious Florentine, "as the French have always claimed to be descended from the relics of Troy." A simpler-minded antiquary might have babbled of green fields, since 'groenighe,' or greenness, was a sufficiently natural appellation for a town surrounded as was Groningen on the east and west by the greenest and fattest of pastures. In population it was only exceeded by Antwerp and Amsterdam. Situate on the line where upper and nether Germany blend into one, the capital of a great province whose very name was synonymous with liberty, and whose hardy sons had clone fierce battle with despotism in every age, so long as there had been human record of despotism and of battles, Groningen had fallen into the hands of the foreign foe, not through the prowess of the Spaniard but the treason of the Netherlander. The baseness of the brilliant, trusted, valiant, treacherous young Renneberg has been recorded on a previous page of these volumes. For thirteen years long the republic had chafed at this acquisition of the hated enemy within its very heart. And now the day had come when a blow should be struck for its deliverance by the ablest soldier that had ever shown himself in those regions, one whom the commonwealth had watched over from his cradle.

For in Groningen there was still a considerable party in favour of the Union, although the treason of Renneberg had hitherto prevented both city and province from incorporating themselves in the body politic of the United Netherlands. Within the precincts were five hundred of Verdugo's veterans under George Lanckema, stationed at a faubourg called Schuytendiess. In the city there was, properly speaking, no garrison, for the citizens in the last few years had come to value themselves on their fidelity to church and king, and to take a sorry pride in being false to all that was noble in their past. Their ancestors had wrested privilege after privilege at the sword's point from the mailed hands of dukes and emperors, until they were almost a self-governing republic; their courts of justice recognizing no appeal to higher powers, even under the despotic sway of Charles V. And now, under the reign of his son, and in the feebler days of that reign, the capital of the free Frisians--the men whom their ancient pagan statutes had once declared to be "free so long as the wind blew out of the clouds"--relied upon the trained bands of her burghers enured to arms and well-provided with all. munitions of war to protect her, not against foreign tyranny nor domestic sedition, but against liberty and against law.

For the representative of the most ancient of the princely houses of Europe, a youth whose ancestors had been emperors when the forefathers of Philip, long-descended as he was, were but country squires, was now knocking at their gates. Not as a conqueror and a despot, but as the elected first magistrate and commander-in-chief of the freest commonwealth in the world, Maurice of Nassau, at the head of fifteen thousand Netherlanders, countrymen of their own, now summoned the inhabitants of the town and province to participate with their fellow citizens in all the privileges and duties of the prosperous republic.

It seemed impossible that such an appeal could be resisted by force of arms. Rather it would seem that the very walls should have fallen at his feet at the first blast of the trumpet; but there was military honour, there was religious hatred, there was the obstinacy of party. More than all, there were half a dozen Jesuits within the town, and to those ablest of generals in times of civil war it was mainly owing that the siege of Groningen was protracted longer than under other circumstances would have been possible.

It is not my purpose to describe in detail the scientific operations during the sixty-five days between the 20th May and the 24th July. Again the commander-in-chief enlightened the world by an exhibition of a more artistic and humane style of warfare than previously to his appearance on the military stage had been known. But the daily phenomena of the Leaguer--although they have been minutely preserved by most competent eyewitnesses--are hardly entitled to a place except in special military histories where, however, they should claim the foremost rank.

The fortifications of the city were of the most splendid and substantial character known to the age. The ditches, the ravelins, the curtains, the towers were as thoroughly constructed as the defences of any place in Europe. It was therefore necessary that Maurice and his cousin Lewis should employ all their learning, all their skill, and their best artillery to reduce this great capital of the Eastern Netherlands. Again the scientific coil of approaches wound itself around and around the doomed stronghold; again were constructed the galleries, the covered ways, the hidden mines, where soldiers, transformed to gnomes, burrowed and fought within the bowels of the earth; again that fatal letter Y advanced slowly under ground, stretching its deadly prongs nearer and nearer up to the walls; and again the system of defences against a relieving force was so perfectly established that Verdugo or Mansfield, with what troops they could muster, seemed as powerless as the pewter soldiers with which Maurice in his boyhood--not yet so long passed away --was wont to puzzle over the problems which now practically engaged his early manhood. Again, too, strangely enough, it is recorded that Philip Nassau, at almost the same period of the siege as in that of Gertruydenberg, signalized himself by a deed of drunken and superfluous daring. This time the dinner party was at the quarters of Count Solms, in honour of the Prince of Anhalt, where, after potations pottle deep, Count Philip rushed from the dinner-table to the breach, not yet thoroughly practicable, of the north ravelin, and, entirely without armour, mounted pike in hand to the assault, proposing to carry the fort by his own unaided exertions. Another officer, one Captain Vaillant, still more beside himself than was the count, inspired him to these deeds of valour by assuring him that the mine was to be sprung under the ravelin that afternoon, and that it was a plot on the part of the Holland boatmen to prevent the soldiers who had been working so hard and so long in the mines from taking part in the honours of the assault. The count was with difficulty brought off with a whole skin and put to bed. Yet despite these disgraceful pranks there is no doubt that a better and braver officer than he was hardly to be found even among the ten noble Nassaus who at that moment were fighting for the cause of Dutch liberty-- fortunately with more sobriety than he at all times displayed. On the following day, Prince Maurice, making a reconnoissance of the works with his usual calmness, yet with the habitual contempt of personal danger which made so singular a contrast with the cautious and painstaking characteristics of his strategy, very narrowly escaped death. A shot from the fort struck so hard upon the buckler under cover of which he was taking his observations as to fell him to the ground. Sir Francis Vere, who was with the prince under the same buckler, likewise measured his length in the trench, but both escaped serious injury.

Pauli, one of the States commissioners present in the camp, wrote to Barneveld that it was to be hoped that the accident might prove a warning to his Excellency. He had repeatedly remonstrated with him, he said, against his reckless exposure of himself to unnecessary danger, but he was so energetic and so full of courage that it was impossible to restrain him from being everywhere every day.

Three days later, the letter Y did its work. At ten o'clock 15 July, of the night of the 15th July, Prince Maurice ordered the mines to be sprung, when the north ravelin was blown into the air, and some forty of the garrison with it. Two of them came flying into the besiegers' camp, and, strange to say, one was alive and sound. The catastrophe finished the sixty-five days' siege, the breach was no longer defensible, the obstinacy of the burghers was exhausted, and capitulation followed. In truth, there had been a subterranean intrigue going on for many weeks, which was almost as effective as the mine. A certain Jan to Boer had been going back and forth between camp and city, under various pretexts and safe-conducts, and it had at last appeared that the Jesuits and the five hundred of Verdugo's veterans were all that prevented Groningen from returning to the Union. There had been severe fighting within the city itself, for the Jesuits had procured the transfer of the veterans from the faubourg to the town itself, and the result of all these operations, political, military, and jesuitical, was that on 22nd July articles of surrender were finally agreed upon between Maurice and a deputation from the magistrates, the guilds, and commander Lanckema.

The city was to take its place thenceforth as a member of the Union. William Lewis, already stadholder of Friesland for the united States, was to be recognised as chief magistrate of the whole province, which was thus to retain all its ancient privileges, laws, and rights of self- government, while it exchanged its dependence on a distant, foreign, and decaying despotism for incorporation with a young and vigorous commonwealth.

It was arranged that no religion but the reformed religion, as then practised in the united republic, should be publicly exercised in the province, but that no man should be questioned as to his faith, or troubled in his conscience: Cloisters and ecclesiastical property were to remain 'in statu quo,' until the States-General should come to a definite conclusion on these subjects.

Universal amnesty was proclaimed for all offences and quarrels. Every citizen or resident foreigner was free to remain in or to retire from the town or province, with full protection to his person and property, and it was expressly provided in the articles granted to Lanckema that his soldiers should depart with arms and baggage, leaving to Prince Maurice their colours only, while the prince furnished sufficient transportation for their women and their wounded. The property of Verdugo, royal stadholder of the province, was to be respected, and to remain in the city, or to be taken thence under safe conduct, as might be preferred.

Ten thousand cannon-shot had been fired against the city. The cost of powder and shot consumed was estimated at a hundred thousand florins. Four hundred of the besiegers had been killed, and a much larger number wounded. The army had been further weakened by sickness and numerous desertions. Of the besieged, three hundred soldiers in all were killed, and a few citizens.

Thirty-six cannon were taken, besides mortars, and it was said that eight hundred tons of powder, and plenty of other ammunition and provisions were found in the place.

On the 23rd July Maurice and William Lewis entered the city. Some of the soldiers were disappointed at the inexorable prohibition of pillage; but it was the purpose of Maurice, as of the States-General, to place the sister province at once in the unsullied possession of the liberty and the order for which the struggle with Spain had, been carried on so long. If the limitation of public religious worship seemed harsh, it should be remembered that Romanism in a city occupied by Spanish troops had come to mean unmitigated hostility to the republic. In the midst of civil war, the hour for that religious liberty which was the necessary issue of the great conflict had not yet struck. It was surely something gained for humanity that no man should be questioned at all as to his creed in countries where it was so recently the time-honoured practice to question him on the rack, and to burn him if the answer was objectionable to the inquirer.

It was something that the holy Inquisition had been for ever suppressed in the land. It must be admitted, likewise, that the terms of surrender and the spectacle of re-established law and order which succeeded the capture of Groningen furnished a wholesome contrast to the scenes of ineffable horror that had been displayed whenever a Dutch town had fallen into the hands of Philip.

And thus the commonwealth of the United Netherlands, through the practical military genius and perseverance of Maurice and Lewis William, and the substantial statesmanship of Barneveld and his colleagues, had at last rounded itself into definite shape; while in all directions toward which men turned their eyes, world-empire, imposing and gorgeous as it had seemed for an interval, was vanishing before its votaries like a mirage. The republic, placed on the solid foundations of civil liberty, self-government, and reasonable law, was steadily consolidating itself.

No very prominent movements were undertaken by the forces of the Union during the remainder of the year. According to the agreements with Henry IV. it had been necessary to provide that monarch with considerable assistance to carry on his new campaigns, and it was therefore difficult for Maurice to begin for the moment upon the larger schemes which he had contemplated.

Meantime the condition of the obedient Netherlands demands a hasty glance.

On the death of brother Alexander the Capuchin, Fuentes produced a patent by which Peter Ernest Mansfeld was provisionally appointed governor, in case the post should become vacant. During the year which followed, that testy old campaigner had indulged himself in many petty feuds with all around him, but had effected, as we have seen, very little to maintain the king's authority either in the obedient or disobedient provinces.

His utter incompetency soon became most painfully apparent. His more than puerile dependence upon his son, and the more than paternal severity exercised over him by Count Charles, were made manifest to all the world. The son ruled the trembling but peevish old warrior with an iron rod, and endless was their wrangling with Fuentes and all the other Spaniards. Between the querulousness of the one and the ferocity of the other, poor Fuentes became sick of his life.

"'Tis a diabolical genius, this count Charles," said Ybarra, "and so full of ambition that he insists on governing everybody just as he rules his father. As for me, until the archduke comes I am a fish out of water."

The true successor to Farnese was to be, the Archduke Ernest, one of the many candidates for the hand of the Infanta, and for the throne of that department of the Spanish dominions which was commonly called France. Should Philip not appropriate the throne without further scruple, in person, it was on the, whole decided that his favorite nephew should be the satrap of that outlying district of the Spanish empire. In such case obedient France might be annexed to obedient Netherlands, and united under the sway of Archduke Ernest.

But these dreams had proved in the cold air of reality but midsummer madness. When the name of the archduke was presented to the estates as King Ernest I. of France, even the most unscrupulous and impassioned Leaguers of that country fairly hung their heads. That a foreign prince, whose very name had never been before heard of by the vast bulk of the French population, should be deliberately placed upon the throne of St. Louis and Hugh Capet, was a humiliation hard to defend, profusely as Philip had scattered the Peruvian and Mexican dollars among the great ones of the nation, in order to accomplish his purpose.

So Archduke Ernest, early in the year 1594, came to Brussels, but he came as a gloomy, disappointed man. To be a bachelor-governor of the impoverished, exhausted, half-rebellious, and utterly forlorn little remnant of the Spanish Netherlands, was a different position from that of husband of Clara Isabella and king of France, on which his imagination had been feeding so long.

For nearly the whole twelvemonth subsequent to the death of Farnese, the Spanish envoy to the Imperial court had been endeavouring to arrange for the departure of the archduke to his seat of government in the Netherlands. The prince himself was willing enough, but there were many obstacles on the part of the emperor and his advisers. "Especially there is one very great impossibility," said San Clemente, "and that is the poverty of his Highness, which is so great that my own is not greater in my estate. So I don't see how he can stir a step without money. Here they'll not furnish him with a penny, and for himself he possesses nothing but debts." The emperor was so little pleased with the adventure that in truth, according to the same authority, he looked upon the new viceroy's embarrassments with considerable satisfaction, so that it was necessary for Philip to provide for his travelling expenses.

Ernest was next brother of the Emperor Rudolph, and as intensely devoted to the interests of the Roman Church as was that potentate himself, or even his uncle Philip.

He was gentle, weak, melancholy, addicted to pleasure, a martyr to the gout. He brought no soldiers to the provinces, for the emperor, threatened with another world-empire on his pagan flank, had no funds nor troops to send to the assistance of his Christian brother-in-law and uncle. Moreover, it may be imagined that Rudolph, despite the bonds of religion and consanguinity, was disposed to look coldly on the colossal projects of Philip.

So Ernest brought no troops, but he brought six hundred and seventy gentlemen, pages, and cooks, and five hundred and thirty-four horses, not to charge upon the rebellious Dutchmen withal, but to draw coaches and six.

There was trouble enough prepared for the new governor at his arrival. The great Flemish and Walloon nobles were quarrelling fiercely with the Spaniards and among themselves for office and for precedence. Arschot and his brother Havre both desired the government of Flanders; so did Arenberg. All three, as well as other gentlemen, were scrambling for the majordomo's office in Ernest's palace. Havre wanted the finance department as well, but Ybarra, who was a financier, thought the public funds in his hands would be in a perilous condition, inasmuch as he was provinces was accounted the most covetous man in all the provinces.

So soon as the archduke was known to be approaching the capital there was a most ludicrous race run by all these grandees, in order to be the first to greet his Highness. While Mansfeld and Fuentes were squabbling, as usual, Arschot got the start of both, and arrived at Treves. Then the decrepit Peter Ernest struggled as far as Luxembourg, while Fuentes posted on to Namur. The archduke was much perplexed as to the arranging of all these personages on the day of his entrance into Brussels. In the council of state it was still worse. Arschot claimed the first place as duke and as senior member, Peter Ernest demanded it as late governor- general and because of his grey hairs. Never was imperial highness more disturbed, never was clamour for loaves and fishes more deafening. The caustic financier--whose mind was just then occupied with the graver matter of assassination on a considerable scale--looked with profound contempt at the spectacle thus presented to him. "There has been the devil's own row," said he, "between these counts about offices, and also about going out to receive the most serene archduke. I have had such work with them that by the salvation of my soul I swear if it were to last a fortnight longer I would go off afoot to Spain, even if I were sure of dying in jail after I got there. I have reconciled the two counts (Fuentes and Mansfeld) with each other a hundred times, and another hundred times they have fallen out again, and behaved themselves with such vulgarity that I blushed for them. They are both to blame, but at any rate we have now got the archduke housed, and he will get us out of this embarrassment."

The archduke came with rather a prejudice against the Spaniards-- the result doubtless of his disappointment in regard to France--and he manifested at first an extreme haughtiness to those of that nation with whom he came in contact. A Castilian noble of high rank, having audience with him on one occasion, replaced his hat after salutation, as he had been accustomed to do--according to the manner of grandees of Spain-- during the government of Farnese. The hat was rudely struck from his head by the archduke's chamberlain, and he was himself ignominiously thrust out of the presence. At another time an interview was granted to two Spanish gentlemen who had business to transact. They made their appearance in magnificent national costume, splendidly embroidered in gold. After a brief hearing they were dismissed, with appointment of another audience for a few days later. When they again presented themselves they found the archduke with his court jester standing at his side, the buffoon being attired in a suit precisely similar to their own, which in the interval had been prepared by the court tailor.

Such amenities as these did not increase the popularity of Ernest with the high-spirited Spaniards, nor was it palatable to them that it should be proposed to supersede the old fighting Portuguese, Verdugo, as governor and commander-in-chief for the king in Friesland, by Frederic van den Berg, a renegade Netherlander, unworthy cousin of the Nassaus, who had never shown either military or administrative genius.

Nor did he succeed in conciliating the Flemings or the Germans by these measures. In truth he was, almost without his own knowledge, under the controlling influence of Fuentes, the most unscrupulous and dangerous Spaniard of them all, while his every proceeding was closely watched not only by Diego and Stephen Ybarra, but even by Christoval de Moura, one of Philip's two secretaries of state who at this crisis made a visit to Brussels.

These men were indignant at the imbecility of the course pursued in the obedient provinces. They knew that the incapacity of the Government to relieve the sieges of Gertruydenberg and Groningen had excited the contempt of Europe, and was producing a most damaging effect an Spanish authority throughout Christendom. They were especially irritated by the presence of the arch-intrigues, Mayenne, in Brussels, even after all his double dealings had been so completely exposed that a blind man could have read them. Yet there was Mayenne, consorting with the archduke, and running up a great bill of sixteen thousand florins at the hotel, which the royal paymaster declined to settle for want of funds, notwithstanding Ernest's order to that effect, and there was no possibility of inducing the viceroy to arrest him, much as he had injured and defrauded the king.

How severely Ybarra and Feria denounced Mayenne has been seen; but remonstrances about this and other grave mistakes of administration were lost upon Ernest, or made almost impossible by his peculiar temper. "If I speak of these things to his Highness," said Ybarra, "he will begin to cry, as he always does."

Ybarra, however, thought it his duty secretly to give the king frequent information as to the blasted and forlorn condition of the provinces. "This sick man will die in our arms," he said, "without our wishing to kill him." He also left no doubt in the royal mind as to the utter incompetency of the archduke for his office. Although he had much Christianity, amiability, and good intentions, he was so unused to business, so slow and so lazy, so easily persuaded by those around him, as to be always falling into errors. He was the servant of his own servants, particularly of those least disposed to the king's service and most attentive to their own interests. He had endeavoured to make himself beloved by the natives of the country, while the very reverse of this had been the result.

"As to his agility and the strength of his body," said the Spaniard, as if he were thinking of certain allegories which were to mark the archduke's triumphal entry, "they are so deficient as to leave him unfit for arms. I consider him incapable of accompanying an army to the field, and we find him so new to all such affairs as constitute government and the conduct of warlike business, that he could not steer his way without some one to enlighten and direct him."

It was sometimes complained of in those days--and the thought has even prolonged itself until later times--that those republicans of the United Netherlands had done and could do great things; but that, after all, there was no grandeur about them. Certainly they had done great things. It was something to fight the Ocean for ages, and patiently and firmly to shut him out from his own domain. It was something to extinguish the Spanish Inquisition--a still more cruel and devouring enemy than the sea. It was something that the fugitive spirit of civil and religious liberty had found at last its most substantial and steadfast home upon those storm-washed shoals and shifting sandbanks.