and a few strokes of the oars brought the whole fleet close to Lammen.
This last obstacle rose formidable and frowning directly across their
path. Swarming as it was with soldiers, and bristling with artillery,
it seemed to defy the armada either to carry it by storm or to pass under
its guns into the city. It appeared that the enterprise was, after all,
to founder within sight of the long expecting and expected haven. Boisot
anchored his fleet within a respectful distance, and spent what remained
of the day in carefully reconnoitring the fort, which seemed only too
strong. In conjunction with Leyderdorp, the head-quarters of Valdez, a
mile and a half distant on the right, and within a mile of the city, it
seemed so insuperable an impediment that Boisot wrote in despondent tone
to the Prince of Orange. He announced his intention of carrying the
fort, if it were possible, on the following morning, but if obliged to
retreat, he observed, with something like despair, that there would be
nothing for it but to wait for another gale of wind. If the waters
should rise sufficiently to enable them to make a wide detour, it might
be possible, if, in the meantime, Leyden did not starve or surrender, to
enter its gates from the opposite side.
Meantime, the citizens had grown wild with expectation. A dove had been
despatched by Boisot, informing them of his precise position, and a
number of citizens accompanied the burgomaster, at nightfall, toward the
tower of Hengist. Yonder, cried the magistrate, stretching out his hand
towards Lammen, "yonder, behind that fort, are bread and meat, and
brethren in thousands. Shall all this be destroyed by the Spanish guns,
or shall we rush to the rescue of our friends?"--"We will tear the
fortress to fragments with our teeth and nails," was the reply, "before
the relief, so long expected, shall be wrested from us." It was resolved
that a sortie, in conjunction with the operations of Boisot, should be
made against Lammen with the earliest dawn. Night descended upon the
scene, a pitch dark night, full of anxiety to the Spaniards, to the
armada, to Leyden. Strange sights and sounds occurred at different
moments to bewilder the anxious sentinels. A long procession of lights
issuing from the fort was seen to flit across the black face of the
waters, in the dead of night, and the whole of the city wall, between the
Cow-gate and the Tower of Burgundy, fell with a loud crash. The horror-
struck citizens thought that the Spaniards were upon them at last; the
Spaniards imagined the noise to indicate, a desperate sortie of the
citizens. Everything was vague and mysterious.
Day dawned, at length, after the feverish, night, and, the Admiral
prepared for the assault. Within the fortress reigned a death-like
stillness, which inspired a sickening suspicion. Had the city, indeed,
been carried in the night; had the massacre already commenced; had all
this labor and audacity been expended in vain? Suddenly a man was
descried, wading breast-high through the water from Lammen towards the
fleet, while at the same time, one solitary boy was seen to wave his cap
from the summit of the fort. After a moment of doubt, the happy mystery
was solved. The Spaniards had fled, panic struck, during the darkness.
Their position would still have enabled them, with firmness, to frustrate
the enterprise of the patriots, but the hand of God, which had sent the
ocean and the tempest to the deliverance of Leyden, had struck her
enemies with terror likewise. The lights which had been seen moving
during the night were the lanterns of the retreating Spaniards, and the
boy who was now waving his triumphant signal from the battlements had
alone witnessed the spectacle. So confident was he in the conclusion to
which it led him, that he had volunteered at daybreak to go thither all
alone. The magistrates, fearing a trap, hesitated for a moment to
believe the truth, which soon, however, became quite evident. Valdez,
flying himself from Leyderdorp, had ordered Colonel Borgia to retire with
all his troops from Lammen. Thus, the Spaniards had retreated at the
very moment that an extraordinary accident had laid bare a whole side of
the city for their entrance. The noise of the wall, as it fell, only
inspired them with fresh alarm for they believed that the citizens had
sallied forth in the darkness, to aid the advancing flood in the work of
destruction. All obstacles being now removed, the fleet of Boisot swept
by Lammen, and entered the city on the morning of the 3rd of October.
Leyden was relieved.
The quays were lined with the famishing population, as the fleet rowed
through the canals, every human being who could stand, coming forth to
greet the preservers of the city. Bread was thrown from every vessel
among the crowd. The poor creatures who, for two months had tasted no
wholesome human food, and who had literally been living within the jaws
of death, snatched eagerly the blessed gift, at last too liberally
bestowed. Many choked themselves to death, in the greediness with which
they devoured their bread; others became ill with the effects of plenty
thus suddenly succeeding starvation; but these were isolated cases, a
repetition of which was prevented. The Admiral, stepping ashore, was
welcomed by the magistracy, and a solemn procession was immediately
formed. Magistrates and citizens, wild Zealanders, emaciated burgher
guards, sailors, soldiers, women, children, nearly every living person
within the walls, all repaired without delay to the great church, stout
Admiral Boisot leading the way. The starving and heroic city, which had
been so firm in its resistance to an earthly king, now bent itself in
humble gratitude before the King of kings. After prayers, the whole vast
congregation joined in the thanksgiving hymn. Thousands of voices raised
the-song, but few were able to carry it to its conclusion, for the
universal emotion, deepened by the music, became too full for utterance.
The hymn was abruptly suspended, while the multitude wept like children.
This scene of honest pathos terminated; the necessary measures for
distributing the food and for relieving the sick were taken by the
magistracy. A note dispatched to the Prince of Orange, was received by
him at two o'clock, as he sat in church at Delft. It was of a somewhat
different purport from that of the letter which he had received early in
the same day from Boisot; the letter in which the admiral had, informed
him that the success of the enterprise depended; after-all, upon the
desperate assault upon a nearly impregnable fort. The joy of the Prince
may be easily imagined, and so soon as the sermon was concluded; he
handed the letter just received to the minister, to be read to the
congregation. Thus, all participated in his joy, and united with him in
thanksgiving.
The next day, notwithstanding the urgent entreaties of his friends, who
were anxious lest his life should be endangered by breathing, in his
scarcely convalescent state; the air of the city where so many thousands
had been dying of the pestilence, the Prince repaired to Leyden. He, at
least, had never doubted his own or his country's fortitude. They could,
therefore, most sincerely congratulate each other, now that the victory
had been achieved. "If we are doomed to perish," he had said a little
before the commencement of the siege, "in the name of God, be it so! At
any rate, we shall have the honor to have done what no nation ever, did
before us, that of having defended and maintained ourselves, unaided, in
so small a country, against the tremendous efforts of such powerful
enemies. So long as the poor inhabitants here, though deserted by all
the world, hold firm, it will still cost the Spaniards the half of Spain,
in money and in men, before they can make an end of us."
The termination of the terrible siege of Leyden was a convincing proof to
the Spaniards that they had not yet made an end of the Hollanders. It
furnished, also, a sufficient presumption that until they had made an end
of them, even unto the last Hollander, there would never be an end of the
struggle in which they were engaged. It was a slender consolation to the
Governor-General, that his troops had been vanquished, not by the enemy,
but by the ocean. An enemy whom the ocean obeyed with such docility
might well be deemed invincible by man. In the head-quarters of Valdez,
at Leyderdorp, many plans of Leyden and the neighbourhood were found
lying in confusion about the room. Upon the table was a hurried farewell
of that General to the scenes of his, discomfiture, written in a Latin
worthy of Juan Vargas: "Vale civitas, valete castelli parvi, qui relicti
estis propter aquam et non per vim inimicorum!" In his precipitate
retreat before the advancing rebels, the Commander had but just found
time for this elegant effusion, and, for his parting instructions to
Colonel Borgia that the fortress of Lammen was to be forthwith abandoned.
These having been reduced to writing, Valdez had fled so speedily as to
give rise to much censure and more scandal. He was even accused of
having been bribed by the Hollanders to desert his post, a tale which
many repeated, and a few believed. On the 4th of October, the day
following that on which the relief of the city was effected, the wind
shifted to the north-east, and again blew a tempest. It was as if the
waters, having now done their work, had been rolled back to the ocean by
an Omnipotent hand, for in the course of a few days, the land was bare
again, and the work of reconstructing the dykes commenced.
After a brief interval of repose, Leyden had regained its former
position. The Prince, with advice of the estates, had granted the city,
as a reward for its sufferings, a ten days' annual fair, without tolls or
taxes, and as a further manifestation of the gratitude entertained by
the people of Holland and Zealand for the heroism of the citizens, it was
resolved that an academy or university should be forthwith established
within their walls. The University of Leyden, afterwards so illustrious,
was thus founded in the very darkest period of the country's struggle.
The university was endowed with a handsome revenue, principally derived
from the ancient abbey of Egmont, and was provided with a number of
professors, selected for their genius, learning, and piety among all the
most distinguished scholars of the Netherlands. The document by which
the institution was founded was certainly a masterpiece of ponderous
irony, for as the fiction of the King's sovereignty was still maintained,
Philip was gravely made to establish the university, as a reward to
Leyden for rebellion to himself. "Considering," said this wonderful
charter, "that during these present wearisome wars within our provinces
of Holland and Zealand, all good instruction of youth in the sciences and
liberal arts is likely to come into entire oblivion. . . . . Considering
the differences of religion--considering that we are inclined to gratify
our city of Leyden, with its burghers, on account of the heavy burthens
sustained by them during this war with such faithfulness--we have
resolved, after ripely deliberating with our dear cousin, William, Prince
of Orange, stadholder, to erect a free public school and university,"
etc., etc., etc. So ran the document establishing this famous academy,
all needful regulations for the government and police of the institution
being entrusted by Philip to his "above-mentioned dear cousin of Orange."
The university having been founded, endowed, and supplied with its,
teachers, it was solemnly consecrated in the following winter, and it is
agreeable to contemplate this scene of harmless pedantry, interposed, as
it was, between the acts of the longest and dreariest tragedy of modern
time. On the 5th of February, 1575, the city of Leyden, so lately the
victim of famine and pestilence, had crowned itself with flowers. At
seven in the morning, after a solemn religious celebration in the Church
of St. Peter, a grand procession was formed. It was preceded by a
military escort, consisting of the burgher militia and the five companies
of infantry stationed in the city. Then came, drawn by four horses, a
splendid triumphal chariot, on which sat a female figure, arrayed in
snow-white garments. This was the Holy Gospel. She was attended by the
Four Evangelists, who walked on foot at each side of her chariot. Next
followed Justice, with sword and scales, mounted; blindfold, upon a
unicorn, while those learned doctors, Julian, Papinian, Ulpian, and
Tribonian, rode on either side, attended by two lackeys and four men at
arms. After these came Medicine, on horseback, holding in one hand a
treatise of the healing art, in the other a garland of drugs. The
curative goddess rode between the four eminent physicians, Hippocrates,
Galen, Dioscorides, and Theophrastus, and was attended by two footmen and
four pike-bearers. Last of the allegorical personages came Minerva,
prancing in complete steel, with lance in rest, and bearing her Medusa
shield. Aristotle and Plato, Cicero and Virgil, all on horseback, with
attendants in antique armor at their back, surrounded the daughter of
Jupiter, while the city band, discoursing eloquent music from hautboy and
viol, came upon the heels of the allegory. Then followed the mace-
bearers and other officials, escorting the orator of the day, the newly-
appointed professors and doctors, the magistrates and dignitaries, and
the body of the citizens generally completing the procession.
Marshalled in this order, through triumphal arches, and over a pavement
strewed with flowers, the procession moved slowly up and down the
different streets, and along the quiet canals of the city. As it reached
the Nuns' Bridge, a barge of triumph, gorgeously decorated, came floating
slowly down the sluggish Rhine. Upon its deck, under a canopy enwreathed
with laurels and oranges, and adorned with tapestry, sat Apollo, attended
by the Nine Muses, all in classical costume; at the helm stood Neptune
with his trident. The Muses executed some beautiful concerted pieces;
Apollo twanged his lute. Having reached the landing-place, this
deputation from Parnassus stepped on shore, and stood awaiting the
arrival of the procession. Each professor, as he advanced, was gravely
embraced and kissed by Apollo and all the Nine Muses in turn, who greeted
their arrival besides with the recitation of an elegant Latin poem. This
classical ceremony terminated, the whole procession marched together to
the cloister of Saint Barbara, the place prepared for the new university,
where they listened to an eloquent oration by the Rev. Caspar Kolhas,
after which they partook of a magnificent banquet. With this memorable
feast, in the place where famine had so lately reigned, the ceremonies
were concluded.
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