the soldiers, and then there was a council of war: It was decided--
notwithstanding the Earl's announcement of his intentions to attack Parma
in person--that the condition of the army did not warrant such an
enterprise. It was thought better to lay siege to Zutphen. This step,
if successful, would place in the power of the republic and her ally a
city of great importance and strength. In every event the attempt would
probably compel Farnese to raise the siege of Berg.
Leicester, accordingly, with "his brave troop of able and likely men"
--five thousand of the infantry being English--advanced as far as
Doesburg. This city, seated at the confluence of the ancient canal of
Drusus and the Yssel, five miles above Zutphen, it was necessary, as a
preliminary measure, to secure. It was not a very strong place, being
rather slightly walled with brick, and with a foss drawing not more than
three feet of water. By the 30th August it had been completely invested.
On the same night, at ten o'clock, Sir William Pelham, came to the Earl
to tell him "what beastly pioneers the Dutchmen were. "Leicester
accordingly determined, notwithstanding the lord-marshal's entreaties,
to proceed to the trenches in person. There being but faint light, the
two lost their way, and soon found themselves nearly, at the gate of the
town. Here, while groping about in the dark; and trying to effect their
retreat, they were saluted with a shot, which struck Sir William in the
stomach. For an instant; thinking himself mortally injured, he expressed
his satisfaction that he had been, between the commander-in-chief and the
blow, and made other "comfortable and resolute speeches." Very
fortunately, however, it proved that the marshal was not seriously hurt,
and, after a few days, he was about his work as usual, although obliged--
as the Earl of Leicester expressed it--"to carry a bullet in his belly as
long as he should live."
Roger Williams, too, that valiant adventurer--"but no, more valiant than
wise, and worth his weight in gold," according to the appreciative
Leicester--was shot through the arm. For the dare-devil Welshman, much
to the Earl's regret, persisted in running up and down the trenches "with
a great plume of feathers in his gilt morion," and in otherwise making a
very conspicuous mark of himself "within pointblank of a caliver."
Notwithstanding these mishaps, however, the siege went successfully
forward. Upon the 2nd September the Earl began to batter, and after a
brisk cannonade, from dawn till two in the afternoon, he had considerably
damaged the wall in two places. One of the breaches was eighty feet
wide, the other half as large, but the besieged had stuffed them full of
beds, tubs, logs of wood, boards, and "such like trash," by means whereof
the ascent was not so easy as it seemed. The soldiers were excessively
eager for the assault. Sir John Norris came to Leicester to receive his
orders as to the command of the attacking party.
The Earl referred the matter to him. "There is no man," answered Sir
John, "fitter for that purpose than myself; for I am colonel-general of
the infantry."
But Leicester, not willing to indulge so unreasonable a proposal,
replied that he would reserve him for service of less hazard and greater
importance. Norris being, as usual, "satis prodigus magnae animae," was
out of humour at the refusal, and ascribed it to the Earl's persistent
hostility to him and his family. It was then arranged that the assault
upon the principal breach should be led by younger officers, to be
supported by Sir John and other veterans. The other breach was assigned
to the Dutch and Scotch-black Norris scowling at them the while with
jealous eyes; fearing that they might get the start of the English party,
and be first to enter the town. A party of noble volunteers clustered
about Sir John-Lord Burgh, Sir Thomas Cecil, Sir Philip Sidney, and his
brother Robert among the rest--most impatient for the signal. The race
was obviously to be a sharp one. The governor-general forbade these
violent demonstrations, but Lord Burgh, "in a most vehement passion,
waived the countermand," and his insubordination was very generally
imitated. Before the signal was given, however, Leicester sent a trumpet
to summon the town to surrender, and could with difficulty restrain his
soldiers till the answer should be returned. To the universal
disappointment, the garrison agreed to surrender. Norris himself then
stepped forward to the breach, and cried aloud the terms, lest the
returning herald, who had been sent back by Leicester, should offer too
favourable a capitulation. It was arranged that the soldiers should
retire without arms, with white wands in their hands--the officers
remaining prisoners--and that the burghers, their lives, and property,
should be at Leicester's disposal. The Earl gave most peremptory orders
that persons and goods should be respected, but his commands were dis
obeyed. Sir William Stanley's men committed frightful disorders, and
thoroughly, rifled the town."
"And because," said Norris, "I found fault herewith, Sir William began to
quarrel with me, hath braved me extremely, refuseth to take any direction
from me, and although I have sought for redress, yet it is proceeded in
so coldly, that he taketh encouragement rather to increase the quarrel
than to leave it."
Notwithstanding therefore the decree of Leicester, the expostulations and
anger of Norris, and the energetic efforts of Lord Essex and other
generals, who went about smiting the marauders on the head, the soldiers
sacked the city, and committed various disorders, in spite of the
capitulation.
Doesburg having been thus reduced, the Earl now proceeded toward the more
important city which he had determined to besiege. Zutphen, or South-
Fen, an antique town of wealth and elegance, was the capital of the old
Landgraves of Zutphen. It is situate on the right bank of the Yssel,
that branch of the Rhine which flows between Gelderland and Overyssel
into the Zuyder-Zee.
The ancient river, broad, deep, and languid, glides through a plain of
almost boundless extent, till it loses itself in the flat and misty
horizon. On the other side of the stream, in the district called the
Veluwe, or bad meadow, were three sconces, one of them of remarkable
strength. An island between the city and the shore was likewise well
fortified. On the landward side the town was protected by a wall and
moat sufficiently strong in those infant days of artillery. Near the
hospital-gate, on the east, was an external fortress guarding the road to
Warnsfeld. This was a small village, with a solitary slender church-
spire, shooting up above a cluster of neat one-storied houses. It was
about an English mile from Zutphen, in the midst of a wide, low, somewhat
fenny plain, which, in winter, became so completely a lake, that peasants
were not unfrequently drowned in attempting to pass from the city to the
village. In summer, the vague expanse of country was fertile and
cheerful of aspect. Long rows of poplars marking the straight highways,
clumps of pollard willows scattered around the little meres, snug farm-
houses, with kitchen-gardens and brilliant flower-patches dotting the
level plain, verdant pastures sweeping off into seemingly infinite
distance, where the innumerable cattle seemed to swarm like insects,
wind-mills swinging their arms in all directions, like protective giants,
to save the country from inundation, the lagging sail of market-boats
shining through rows of orchard trees--all gave to the environs of
Zutphen a tranquil and domestic charm.
Deventer and Kampen, the two other places on the river, were in the hands
of the States. It was, therefore, desirable for the English and the
patriots, by gaining possession of Zutphen, to obtain control of the
Yssel; driven, as they had been, from the Meuse and Rhine.
Sir John Norris, by Leicester's direction, took possession of a
small rising-ground, called 'Gibbet Dill' on the land-side; where he
established a fortified camp, and proceeded to invest the city. With him
were Count Lewis William of Nassau, and Sir Philip Sidney, while the Earl
himself, crossing the Yssel on a bridge of boats which he had
constructed, reserved for himself the reduction of the forts upon the
Veluwe side.
Farnese, meantime, was not idle; and Leicester's calculations proved
correct. So soon as the Prince was informed of this important
demonstration of the enemy he broke up--after brief debate with his
officers--his camp before Rheinberg, and came to Wesel. At this place
he built a bridge over the Rhine, and fortified it with two block-houses.
These he placed under command of Claude Berlot, who was ordered to watch
strictly all communication up the river with the city of Rheinberg, which
he thus kept in a partially beleaguered state. Alexander then advanced
rapidly by way of Groll and Burik, both which places he took possession
of, to the neighbourhood of Zutphen. He was determined, at every hazard,
to relieve that important city; and although, after leaving necessary
detachments on the, way; he had but five thousand men under his command,
besides fifteen hundred under Verdugo--making sixty-five hundred in all
--he had decided that the necessity of the case, and his own honour;
required him to seek the enemy, and to leave, as he said, the issue with
the God of battles, whose cause it was.
Tassis, lieutenant-governor of Gelderland, was ordered into the city with
two cornets of horse and six hundred foot. As large a number, had
already been stationed there. Verdugo, who had been awaiting the arrival
of the Prince at Borkelo, a dozen miles from Zutphen, with four hundred
foot and two hundred horse, now likewise entered the city.
On the night of 29th August Alexander himself entered Zutphen for
the purpose of encouraging the garrison by promise of-relief, and of
ascertaining the position of the enemy by personal observation. His
presence as it always did, inspired the soldiers with enthusiasm, so that
they could with difficulty be restrained from rushing forth to assault
the besiegers. In regard to the enemy he found that Gibbet Hill was
still occupied by Sir John Norris, "the best soldier, in his opinion,
that they had," who had entrenched himself very strongly, and was
supposed to have thirty-five hundred men under his command. His position
seemed quite impregnable. The rest of the English were on the other side
of the river, and Alexander observed, with satisfaction, that they had
abandoned a small redoubt, near the leper-house, outside the Loor-Gate,
through which the reinforcements must enter the city. The Prince
determined to profit by this mistake, and to seize the opportunity thus
afforded of sending those much needed supplies. During the night the
enemy were found to be throwing up works "most furiously," and
skirmishing parties were sent out of the town to annoy them. In the
darkness nothing of consequence was effected, but a Scotch officer was
captured, who informed the Spanish commander that the enemy was fifteen
thousand strong--a number which was nearly double that of Leicester's
actual force. In the morning Alexander returned to his camp at Borkelo
--leaving Tassis in command of the Veluwe Forts, and Verdugo in the city
itself--and he at once made rapid work in collecting victuals. He had
soon wheat and other supplies in readiness, sufficient to feed four
thousand mouths for three months, and these he determined to send into
the city immediately, and at every hazard.
The great convoy which was now to be despatched required great care and a
powerful escort. Twenty-five hundred musketeers and pikemen, of whom one
thousand were Spaniards, and six hundred cavalry, Epirotes; Spaniards,
and Italians, under Hannibal Gonzaga, George Crescia, Bentivoglio, Sesa,
and others, were accordingly detailed for this expedition. The Marquis
del Vasto, to whom was entrusted the chief command, was ordered to march
from Borkelo at midnight on Wednesday, October 1 (St. Nov.) [N.S.]. It
was calculated that he would reach a certain hillock not far from
Warnsfeld by dawn of day. Here he was to pause, and send forward an
officer towards the town, communicating his arrival, and requesting the
cooperation of Verdugo, who was to make a sortie with one thousand men,
according to Alexander's previous arrangements. The plan was
successfully carried out. The Marquis arrived by daybreak at the spot
indicated, and despatched Captain de Vega who contrived to send
intelligence of the fact. A trooper, whom Parma had himself sent to
Verdugo with earlier information of the movement, had been captured on
the way. Leicester had therefore been apprized, at an early moment, of
the Prince's intentions, but he was not aware that the convoy would be
accompanied by so strong a force as had really been detailed.
He had accordingly ordered Sir John Norris, who commanded on the outside
of the town near the road which the Spaniards must traverse, to place
an ambuscade in his way. Sir John, always ready for adventurous
enterprises, took a body of two hundred cavalry, all picked men,
and ordered Sir William Stanley, with three hundred pikemen, to follow.
A much stronger force of infantry was held in reserve and readiness,
but it was not thought that it would be required. The ambuscade was
successfully placed, before the dawn of Thursday morning, in the
neighbourhood of Warnsfeld church. On the other hand, the Earl of
Leicester himself, anxious as to the result, came across the river just
at daybreak. He was accompanied by the chief gentlemen in his camp, who
could never be restrained when blows were passing current.
The business that morning was a commonplace and practical though an
important, one--to "impeach" a convoy of wheat and barley, butter,
cheese, and beef--but the names of those noble and knightly volunteers,
familiar throughout Christendom, sound like the roll-call for some
chivalrous tournament. There were Essex and Audley, Stanley, Pelham,
Russell, both the Sidneys, all the Norrises, men whose valour had been.
proved on many a hard-fought battle-field. There, too, was the famous
hero of British ballad whose name was so often to ring on the plains of
the Netherlands--
"The brave Lord Willoughby,
Of courage fierce and fell,
Who would not give one inch of way
For all the devils in hell."
Twenty such volunteers as these sat on horseback that morning around the
stately Earl of Leicester. It seemed an incredible extravagance to send
a handful of such heroes against an army.
But the English commander-in-chief had been listening to the insidious
tongue of Roland York--that bold, plausible, unscrupulous partisan,
already twice a renegade, of whom more was ere long to be heard in the
Netherlands and England. Of the man's courage there could be no doubt,
and he was about to fight that morning in the front rank at the head of
his company. But he had, for some mysterious reason, been bent upon
persuading the Earl that the Spaniards were no match for Englishmen at a
hand-to-hand contest. When they could ride freely up and down, he said,
and use their lances as they liked, they were formidable. But the
English were stronger men, better riders, better mounted, and better
armed. The Spaniards hated helmets and proof armour, while the English
trooper, in casque, cuirass, and greaves, was a living fortress
impregnable to Spanish or Italian light horsemen. And Leicester seemed
almost convinced by his reasoning.
It was five o'clock of a chill autumn morning. It was time for day to
break, but the fog was so thick that a man at the distance of five yards
was quite invisible. The creaking of waggon-wheels and the measured
tramp of soldiers soon became faintly audible however to Sir John Norris
and his five hundred as they sat there in the mist. Presently came
galloping forward in hot haste those nobles and gentlemen, with their
esquires, fifty men in all--Sidney, Willoughby, and the rest--whom
Leicester had no longer been able to restrain from taking part in the
adventure.
A force of infantry, the amount of which cannot be satisfactorily
ascertained, had been ordered by the Earl to cross the bridge at a later
moment. Sidney's cornet of horse was then in Deventer, to which place it
had been sent in order to assist in quelling an anticipated revolt, so
that he came, like most of his companions, as a private volunteer and
knight-errant.
The arrival of the expected convoy was soon more distinctly heard, but
no scouts or outposts had been stationed to give timely notice, of the
enemy's movements. Suddenly the fog, which had shrouded the scene so
closely, rolled away like a curtain, and in the full light of an October
morning the Englishmen found themselves face to face with a compact body
of more than three thousand men. The Marquis del Vasto rode at the head
of the forces surrounded by a band of mounted arquebus men. The cavalry,
under the famous Epirote chief George Crescia, Hannibal Gonzaga,
Bentivoglio, Sesa, Conti, and other distinguished commanders, followed;
the columns of pikemen and musketeers lined the, hedge-rows on both sides
the causeway; while between them the long train of waggons came slowly
along under their protection. The whole force had got in motion after
having sent notice of their arrival to Verdugo, who, with one or two
thousand men, was expected to sally forth almost immediately from the
city-gate.
There was but brief time for deliberation. Notwithstanding the
tremendous odds there was no thought of retreat. Black Norris called to
Sir William Stanley, with whom he had been at variance so lately at
Doesburg.
"There hath been ill-blood between us," he said. "Let us be friends
together this day, and die side by side, if need be, in her Majesty's
cause."
"If you see me not serve my prince with faithful courage now," replied
Stanley, "account, me for ever a coward. Living or dying I will stand
err lie by you in friendship."
As they were speaking these words the young Earl of Essex, general of the
horse, cried to his, handful of troopers:
"Follow me, good fellows, for the honour of England and of England's
Queen!"
As he spoke he dashed, lance in rest, upon the enemy's cavalry,
overthrew the foremost man, horse and rider, shivered his own spear to
splinters, and then, swinging his cartel-axe, rode merrily forward. His
whole little troop, compact, as an arrow-head, flew with an irresistible
shock against the opposing columns, pierced clean through them, and
scattered them in all directions. At the very first charge one hundred
English horsemen drove the Spanish and Albanian cavalry back upon the
musketeers and pikemen. Wheeling with rapidity, they retired before a
volley of musket-shot, by which many horses and a few riders were killed;
and then formed again to renew the attack. Sir Philip Sidney, an coming
to the field, having met Sir William Pelham, the veteran lord marshal,
lightly armed, had with chivalrous extravagance thrown off his own
cuishes, and now rode to the battle with no armour but his cuirass.
At the second charge his horse was shot under him, but, mounting another,
he was seen everywhere, in the thick of the fight, behaving himself with
a gallantry which extorted admiration even from the enemy.
For the battle was a series of personal encounters in which high officers
were doing the work of private, soldiers. Lord North, who had been lying
"bed-rid" with a musket-shot in the leg, had got himself put on
horseback, and with "one boot on and one boot off," bore himself, "most
lustily" through the whole affair. "I desire that her Majesty may know;"
he said, "that I live but to, serve her. A better barony than I have
could not hire the Lord North to live, on meaner terms." Sir William
Russell laid about him with his curtel-axe to such purpose that the
Spaniards pronounced him a devil and not a man. "Wherever," said an eye-
witness, "he saw five or six of the enemy together; thither would he,
and with his hard knocks soon separated their friendship." Lord
Willoughby encountered George Crescia, general of the famed Albanian
cavalry, unhorsed him at the first shock, and rolled him into the ditch.
"I yield me thy prisoner," called out the Epirote in French, "for thou
art a 'preux chevalier;'" while Willoughby, trusting to his captive's
word, galloped onward, and with him the rest of the little troop, till
they seemed swallowed up by the superior numbers of the enemy. His horse
was shot under him, his basses were torn from his legs, and he was nearly
taken a prisoner, but fought his way back with incredible strength and
good fortune. Sir William Stanley's horse had seven bullets in him, but
bore his rider unhurt to the end of the battle. Leicester declared Sir
William and "old Reads" to be "worth their, weight in pearl."
Hannibal Gonzaga, leader of the Spanish cavalry, fell mortally wounded
a The Marquis del Vasto, commander of the expedition, nearly met the same
fate. An Englishman was just cleaving his head with a battle-axe, when a
Spaniard transfixed the soldier with his pike. The most obstinate
struggle took place about the train of waggons. The teamsters had fled
in the beginning of the action, but the English and Spanish soldiers,
struggling with the horses, and pulling them forward and backward, tried
in vain to get exclusive possession of the convoy which was the cause of
the action. The carts at last forced their way slowly nearer and nearer
to the town, while the combat still went on, warm as ever, between the
hostile squadrons. The action, lasted an hour and a half, and again and
again the Spanish horsemen wavered and broke before the handful of
English, and fell back upon their musketeers. Sir Philip Sidney, in the
last charge, rode quite through the enemy's ranks till he came upon their
entrenchments, when a musket-ball from the camp struck him upon the
thigh, three inches above the knee. Although desperately wounded in a
part which should have been protected by the cuishes which he had thrown
aside, he was not inclined to leave the field; but his own horse had been
shot under him at the-beginning of the action, and the one upon which he
was now mounted became too restive for him, thus crippled, to control.
He turned reluctantly away, and rode a mile and a half back to the
entrenchments, suffering extreme pain, for his leg was dreadfully
shattered. As he past along the edge of the battle-field his attendants
brought him a bottle of water to quench his raging thirst. At, that
moment a wounded English soldier, "who had eaten his last at the same
feast," looked up wistfully, in his face, when Sidney instantly handed
him the flask, exclaiming, "Thy necessity is even greater than mine."
He then pledged his dying comrade in a draught, and was soon afterwards
met by his uncle. "Oh, Philip," cried Leicester, in despair, "I am truly
grieved to see thee in this plight." But Sidney comforted him with
manful words, and assured him that death was sweet in the cause of his
Queen and country. Sir William Russell, too, all blood-stained from the
fight, threw his arms around his friend, wept like a child, and kissing
his hand, exclaimed, "Oh! noble Sir Philip, never did man attain hurt so
honourably or serve so valiantly as you." Sir William Pelham declared
"that Sidney's noble courage in the face of our enemies had won him a
name of continuing honour."