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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.