Prince Maurice--State of the Republican army--Martial science of the
period--Reformation of the military system by Prince Maurice--His
military genius--Campaign in the Netherlands--The fort and town of
Zutphen taken by the States' forces--Attack upon Deventer--Its
capitulation--Advance on Groningen, Delfzyl, Opslag, Yementil,
Steenwyk, and other places--Farnese besieges Fort Knodsenburg--
Prince Maurice hastens to its relief--A skirmish ensues resulting in
the discomfiture of the Spanish and Italian troops--Surrender of
Hulat and Nymegen--Close of military, operations of the year.
While the events revealed in the last chapter had been occupying the
energies of Farnese and the resources of his sovereign, there had been
ample room for Prince Maurice to mature his projects, and to make a
satisfactory beginning in the field. Although Alexander had returned to
the Netherlands before the end of the year 1590, and did not set forth on
his second French campaign until late in the following year, yet the
condition of his health, the exhaustion of his funds, and the dwindling
of his army, made it impossible for him to render any effectual
opposition to the projects of the youthful general.
For the first time Maurice was ready to put his theories and studies into
practice on an extensive scale. Compared with modern armaments, the
warlike machinery to be used for liberating the republic from its foreign
oppressors would seem almost diminutive. But the science and skill of a
commander are to be judged by the results he can work out with the
materials within reach. His progress is to be measured by a comparison
with the progress of his contemporaries--coheirs with him of what Time
had thus far bequeathed.
The regular army of the republic, as reconstructed, was but ten thousand
foot and two thousand horse, but it was capable of being largely expanded
by the trainbands of the cities, well disciplined and enured to hardship,
and by the levies of German reiters and other, foreign auxiliaries in
such numbers as could be paid for by the hard-pressed exchequer of the
provinces.
To the state-council, according to its original constitution, belonged
the levying and disbanding of troops, the conferring of military offices,
and the supervision of military operations by sea and land. It was its
duty to see that all officers made oath of allegiance to the United
Provinces.
The course of Leicester's administration, and especially the fatal
treason of Stanley and of York, made it seem important for the true
lovers of their country to wrest from the state-council, where the
English had two seats, all political and military power. And this, as has
been seen, was practically but illegally accomplished. The silent
revolution by which at this epoch all the main attributes of government
passed into the hands of the States-General-acting as a league of
sovereignties--has already been indicated. The period during which the
council exercised functions conferred on it by the States-General
themselves was brief and evanescent. The jealousy of the separate
provinces soon prevented the state-council--a supreme executive body
entrusted with the general defence of the commonwealth--from causing
troops to pass into or out of one province or another without a patent
from his Excellency the Prince, not as chief of the whole army, but as
governor and captain-general of Holland, or Gelderland, or Utrecht, as
the case might be.
The highest military office in the Netherlands was that of
captain-general or supreme commander. This quality was from earliest
times united to that of stadholder, who stood, as his title implied, in
the place of the reigning sovereign, whether count, duke, king, or
emperor. After the foundation of the Republic this dynastic form, like
many others, remained, and thus Prince Maurice was at first only
captain-general of Holland and Zeeland, and subsequently of Gelderland,
Utrecht, and Overyssel, after he had been appointed stadholder of those
three provinces in 1590 on the death of Count Nieuwenaar. However much in
reality he was general-in-chief of the army, he never in all his life
held the appointment of captain-general of the Union.
To obtain a captain's commission in the army, it was necessary to have
served four years, while three years' service was the necessary
preliminary to the post of lieutenant or ensign. Three candidates were
presented by the province for each office, from whom the stadholder
appointed one.--The commissions, except those of the highest commanders,
were made out in the name of the States-General, by advice and consent of
the council of state. The oath of allegiance, exacted from soldiers as
well as officers; mentioned the name of the particular province to which
they belonged, as well as that of the States-Generals. It thus appears
that, especially after Maurice's first and successful campaigns; the
supreme authority over the army really belonged to the States-General,
and that the powers of the state-council in this regard fell, in the
course of four years, more and more into the back-ground, and at last
disappeared almost entirely. During the active period of the war,
however; the effect of this revolution was in fact rather a greater
concentration of military power than its dispersion, for the
States-General meant simply the province of Holland. Holland was the
republic.
The organisation of the infantry was very simple. The tactical unit was
the company. A temporary combination of several companies--made a
regiment, commanded by a colonel or lieutenant-colonel, but for such
regiments there was no regular organisation. Sometimes six or seven
companies were thus combined, sometimes three times that number, but the
strength of a force, however large, was always estimated by the number of
companies, not of regiments.
The normal strength of an infantry company, at the beginning of Maurice's
career, may be stated at one hundred and thirteen, commanded by one
captain, one lieutenant, one ensign, and by the usual non-commissioned
officers. Each company was composed of musketeers, harquebusseers,
pikemen, halberdeers, and buckler-men. Long after, portable firearms had
come into use, the greater portion of foot soldiers continued to be armed
with pikes, until the introduction of the fixed bayonet enabled the
musketeer to do likewise the duty of pikeman. Maurice was among the first
to appreciate the advantage of portable firearms, and he accordingly
increased the proportion of soldiers armed with the musket in his
companies. In a company of a hundred and thirteen, including officers, he
had sixty-four armed with firelocks to thirty carrying pikes and
halberds. As before his time the proportion between the arms had been
nearly even; he thus more than doubled the number of firearms.
Of these weapons there were two sorts, the musket and the harquebus. The
musket was a long, heavy, unmanageable instrument. When fired it
was-placed upon an iron gaffle or fork, which: the soldier carried with
him, and stuck before him into the ground. The bullets of the musket were
twelve to the pound.
The harquebus--or hak-bus, hook-gun, so called because of the hook in the
front part of the barrel to give steadiness in firing--was much lighter,
was discharged from the hand; and carried bullets of twenty-four to the
pound. Both weapons had matchlocks.
The pike was eighteen feet long at least, and pikemen as well as
halberdsmen carried rapiers.
There were three buckler-men to each company, introduced by Maurice for
the personal protection of the leader of the company. The prince was
often attended by one himself, and, on at least one memorable occasion,
was indebted to this shield for the preservation of his life.
The cavalry was divided into lancers and carabineers. The unit was the
squadron, varying in number from sixty to one hundred and fifty, until
the year 1591, when the regular complement of the squadron was fixed at
one hundred and twenty.
As the use of cavalry on the battle-field at that day, or at least in the
Netherlands, was not in rapidity of motion, nor in severity of shock--the
attack usually taking place on a trot--Maurice gradually displaced the
lance in favour of the carbine. His troopers thus became rather mounted
infantry than regular cavalry.
The carbine was at least three feet long, with wheel-locks, and carried
bullets of thirty to the pound.
The artillery was a peculiar Organisation. It was a guild of citizens,
rather than a strictly military force like the cavalry and infantry. The
arm had but just begun to develop itself, and it was cultivated as a
special trade by the guild of the holy Barbara existing in all the
principal cities. Thus a municipal artillery gradually organised itself,
under the direction of the gun-masters (bus-meesters), who in secret
laboured at the perfection of their art, and who taught it to their
apprentices and journeymen; as the principles of other crafts were
conveyed by master to pupil. This system furnished a powerful element of
defence at a period when every city had in great measure to provide for
its own safety.
In the earlier campaigns of Maurice three kinds of artillery were used;
the whole cannon (kartow) of forty-eight pounds; the half-cannon, or
twenty-four pounder, and the field-piece carrying a ball of twelve
pounds. The two first were called battering pieces or siege-guns. All the
guns were of bronze.
The length of the whole cannon was about twelve feet; its weight one
hundred and fifty times that of the ball, or about seven thousand pounds.
It was reckoned that the whole kartow could fire from eighty to one
hundred shots in an hour. Wet hair cloths were used to cool the piece
after every ten or twelve discharges. The usual charge was twenty pounds
of powder.
The whole gun was drawn by thirty-one horses, the half-cannon by
twenty-three.
The field-piece required eleven horses, but a regular field-artillery, as
an integral part of the army, did not exist, and was introduced in much
later times. In the greatest pitched battle ever fought by Maurice, that
of Nieuport, he had but six field-pieces.
The prince also employed mortars in his sieges, from which were thrown
grenades, hot shot, and stones; but no greater distance was reached than
six hundred yards. Bomb-shells were not often used although they had been
known for a century.
Before the days of Maurice a special education for engineers had never
been contemplated. Persons who had privately acquired a knowledge of
fortification and similar branches of the science were employed, upon
occasion, but regular corps of engineers there were none. The prince
established a course of instruction in this profession at the University
of Leyden, according to a system drawn up by the celebrated Stevinus.
Doubtless the most important innovation of the prince, and the one which
required the most energy to enforce, was the use of the spade. His
soldiers were jeered at by the enemy as mere boors and day labourers who
were dishonouring themselves and their profession by the use of that
implement instead of the sword. Such a novelty was a shock to all the
military ideas of the age, and it was only the determination and vigour
of the prince and of his cousin Lewis William that ultimately triumphed
over the universal prejudice.
The pay of the common soldier varied from ten to twenty florins the
month, but every miner had eighteen florins, and, when actually working
in the mines, thirty florins monthly. Soldiers used in digging trenches
received, over and above their regular pay, a daily wage of from ten to
fifteen styvers, or nearly a shilling sterling.
Another most wholesome improvement made by the prince was in the payment
of his troops. The system prevailing in every European country at that
day, by which Governments were defrauded and soldiers starved, was most
infamous. The soldiers were paid through the captain, who received the
wages of a full company, when perhaps not one-third of the names on the
master-roll were living human beings. Accordingly two-thirds of all the
money stuck to the officer's fingers, and it was not thought a disgrace
to cheat the Government by dressing and equipping for the day a set of
ragamuffins, caught up in the streets for the purpose, and made to pass
muster as regular soldiers.
These parse-volants, or scarecrows, were passed freely about from one
company to another, and the indecency of the fraud was never thought a
disgrace to the colours of the company.
Thus, in the Armada year, the queen had demanded that a portion of her
auxiliary force in the Netherlands should be sent to England. The States
agreed that three thousand of these English troops, together with a few
cavalry companies, should go, but stipulated that two thousand should
remain in the provinces. The queen accepted the proposal, but when the
two thousand had been counted out, it appeared that there was scarcely a
man left for the voyage to England. Yet every one of the English captains
had claimed full pay for his company from her Majesty's exchequer.
Against this tide of peculation and corruption the strenuous Maurice set
himself with heart and soul, and there is no doubt that to his
reformation in this vital matter much of his military success was owing.
It was impossible that roguery and venality should ever furnish a solid
foundation for the martial science.
To the student of military history the campaigns and sieges of Maurice,
and especially the earlier: ones, are of great importance. There is no
doubt whatever, that the youth who now, after deep study and careful
preparation, was measuring himself against the first captains of the age,
was founding the great modern school of military science. It was in this
Netherland academy, and under the tuition of its consummate professor,
that the commanders of the seventeenth century not only acquired the
rudiments, but perfected themselves in the higher walks of their art.
Therefore the siege operations, in which all that had been invented by
modern genius, or rescued from the oblivion which had gathered over
ancient lore during the more vulgar and commonplace practice of the
mercenary commanders of the day was brought into successful application,
must always engage the special attention of the military student.
To the general reader, more interested in marking the progress of
civilisation and the advance of the people in the path of development and
true liberty, the spectacle of the young stadholder's triumphs has an
interest of another kind. At the moment when a thorough practical soldier
was most needed by the struggling little commonwealth, to enable it to
preserve liberties partially secured by its unparalleled sacrifices of
blood and treasure during a quarter of a century, and to expel the
foreign invader from the soil which he had so long profaned, it was
destined that a soldier should appear.
Spade in hand, with his head full of Roman castrametation and geometrical
problems, a prince, scarce emerged from boyhood, presents himself on that
stage where grizzled Mansfelds, drunken Hohenlos, and truculent Verdugos
have been so long enacting, that artless military drama which consists of
hard knocks and wholesale massacres. The novice is received with
universal hilarity. But although the machinery of war varies so steadily
from age to age that a commonplace commander of to-day, rich in the
spoils of preceding time, might vanquish the Alexanders, and Caesars, and
Frederics, with their antiquated enginery, yet the moral stuff out of
which great captains, great armies, great victories are created, is the
simple material it was in the days of Sesostris or Cyrus. The moral and
physiological elements remain essentially the same as when man first
began to walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures.
To make an army a thorough mowing-machine, it then seemed necessary that
it should be disciplined into complete mechanical obedience. To secure
this, prompt payment of wages and inexorable punishment of delinquencies
were indispensable. Long arrearages were now converting Farnese's
veterans into systematic marauders; for unpaid soldiers in every age and
country have usually degenerated into highwaymen, and it is an
impossibility for a sovereign, with the strictest intentions, to persist
in starving his soldiers and in killing them for feeding themselves. In
Maurice's little army, on the contrary, there were no back-wages and no
thieving. At the siege of Delfzyl Maurice hung two of his soldiers for
stealing, the one a hat and the other a poniard, from the townsfolk,
after the place had capitulated. At the siege of Hulst he ordered another
to be shot, before the whole camp, for robbing a woman.
This seems sufficiently harsh, but war is not a pastime nor a very humane
occupation. The result was, that robbery disappeared, and it is better
for all that enlisted men should be soldiers rather than thieves. To
secure the ends which alone can justify war--and if the Netherlanders
engaged in defending national existence and human freedom against foreign
tyranny were not justifiable then a just war has never been waged--a
disciplined army is vastly more humane in its operations than a band of
brigands. Swift and condign punishments by the law-martial, for even
trifling offences, is the best means of discipline yet devised.
To bring to utmost perfection the machinery already in existence, to
encourage invention, to ponder the past with a practical application to
the present, to court fatigue, to scorn pleasure, to concentrate the
energies on the work in hand, to cultivate quickness of eye and calmness
of nerve in the midst of danger, to accelerate movements, to economise
blood even at the expense of time, to strive after ubiquity and
omniscience in the details of person and place, these were the
characteristics of Maurice, and they have been the prominent traits of
all commanders who have stamped themselves upon their age. Although his
method of war-making differed as far as possible from that quality in
common, of the Bearnese, yet the two had one personal insensibility to
fear. But in the case of Henry, to confront danger for its own sake was
in itself a pleasure, while the calmer spirit of Maurice did not so much
seek the joys of the combat as refuse to desist from scientific
combinations in the interests of his personal safety. Very frequently, in
the course of his early campaigns, the prince was formally and urgently
requested by the States-General not to expose his life so recklessly, and
before he had passed his twenty-fifth year he had received wounds which,
but for fortunate circumstances, would have proved mortal, because he was
unwilling to leave special operations on which much was depending to
other eyes than his own. The details of his campaigns are, of necessity,
the less interesting to a general reader from their very completeness.
Desultory or semi-civilised warfare, where the play of the human passions
is distinctly visible, where individual man, whether in buff jerkin or
Milan coat of proof, meets his fellow man in close mortal combat, where
men starve by thousands or are massacred by town-fulls, where hamlets or
villages blaze throughout whole districts or are sunk beneath the
ocean--scenes of rage, hatred, vengeance, self-sacrifice, patriotism,
where all the virtues and vices of which humanity is capable stride to
and fro in their most violent colours and most colossal shape where man
in a moment rises almost to divinity, or sinks beneath the beasts of the
field--such tragical records of which the sanguinary story of mankind is
full--and no portion of them more so than the Netherland chronicles
appeal more vividly to the imagination than the neatest solution of
mathematical problems. Yet, if it be the legitimate end of military
science to accomplish its largest purposes at the least expense of human
suffering; if it be progress in civilisation to acquire by scientific
combination what might be otherwise attempted, and perhaps vainly
attempted, by infinite carnage, then is the professor with his diagrams,
standing unmoved amid danger, a more truly heroic image than
Coeur-de-Lion with his battle-axe or Alva with his truncheon.
The system--then a new one--which Maurice introduced to sustain that
little commonwealth from sinking of which he had become at the age of
seventeen the predestined chief, was the best under the circumstances
that could have been devised. Patriotism the most passionate, the most
sublime, had created the republic. To maintain its existence against
perpetual menace required the exertion of perpetual skill.
Passionless as algebra, the genius of Maurice was ready for the task.
Strategic points of immense value, important cities and fortresses, vital
river-courses and communications--which foreign tyranny had acquired
during the tragic past with a patient iniquity almost without a parallel,
and which patriotism had for years vainly struggled to recover--were the
earliest trophies and prizes of his art. But the details of his victories
may be briefly indicated, for they have none of the picturesqueness of
crime. The sieges of Naarden, Harlem, Leyden, were tragedies of maddening
interest, but the recovery of Zutphen, Deventer, Nymegen, Groningen, and
many other places--all important though they were--was accomplished with
the calmness of a consummate player, who throws down on the table the
best half dozen invincible cards which it thus becomes superfluous to
play.
There were several courses open to the prince before taking the field. It
was desirable to obtain control of the line of the Waal, by which that
heart of the republic--Holland--would be made entirely secure. To this
end, Gertruydenberg--lately surrendered to the enemy by the perfidy of
the Englishman Wingfield, to whom it had been entrusted--Bois le Duc, and
Nymegen were to be wrested from Spain.
It was also important to hold the Yssel, the course of which river led
directly through the United Netherlands, quite to the Zuyder Zee, cutting
off Friesland, Groningen, and Gelderland from their sister provinces of
Holland and Zeeland. And here again the keys to this river had been lost
by English treason. The fort of Zutphen and the city of Deventer had been
transferred to the Spaniard by Roland York and Sir William Stanley, in
whose honour the republic had so blindly confided, and those cities it
was now necessary to reduce by regular siege before the communications
between the eastern and western portions of the little commonwealth could
ever be established.
Still farther in the ancient Frisian depths, the memorable treason of
that native Netherlander, the high-born Renneberg, had opened the way for
the Spaniard's foot into the city of Groningen. Thus this whole important
province--with its capital--long subject to the foreign oppressor, was
garrisoned with his troops.
Verdugo, a veteran officer of Portuguese birth, who had risen from the
position of hostler to that of colonel and royal stadholder, commanded in
Friesland. He had in vain demanded reinforcements and supplies from
Farnese, who most reluctantly was obliged to refuse them in order that he
might obey his master's commands to neglect everything for the sake of
the campaign in France.
And Verdugo, stripped of all adequate forces to protect his important
province, was equally destitute of means for feeding the troops that were
left to him. "I hope to God that I may do my duty to the king and your
Highness," he cried, "but I find myself sold up and pledged to such an
extent that I am poorer than when I was a soldier at four crowns a month.
And everybody in the town is as desperate as myself."
Maurice, after making a feint of attacking Gertruydenberg and Bois le
Duc, so that Farnese felt compelled, with considerable difficulty, to
strengthen the garrison of those places, came unexpectedly to Arnhem with
a force of nine thousand foot and sixteen hundred horse. He had
previously and with great secrecy sent some companies of infantry under
Sir Francis Vere to Doesburg.
On the 23rd May (1591) five peasants and six peasant women made their
appearance at dawn of day before the chief guard-house of the great fort
in the Badmeadow (Vel-uwe), opposite Zutphen, on the west side of the
Yssel. It was not an unusual occurrence. These boors and their wives had
brought baskets of eggs, butter, and cheese, for the garrison, and they
now set themselves quietly down on the ground before the gate, waiting
for the soldiers of the garrison to come out and traffic with them for
their supplies. Very soon several of the guard made their appearance, and
began to chaffer with the peasants, when suddenly one of the women
plucked a pistol from under her petticoats and shot dead the soldier who
was cheapening her eggs. The rest of the party, transformed in an instant
from boors to soldiers, then sprang upon the rest of the guard,
overpowered and bound them, and took possession of the gate. A
considerable force, which had been placed in ambush by Prince Maurice
near the spot, now rushed forward, and in a few minutes the great fort of
Zutphen was mastered by the States' forces without loss of a man. It was
a neat and perfectly successful stratagem.
Next day Maurice began the regular investment of the city. On the 26th,
Count Lewis William arrived with some Frisian companies. On the 27th,
Maurice threw a bridge of boats from the Badmeadow side, across the river
to the Weert before the city. On the 28th he had got batteries, mounting
thirty-two guns, into position, commanding the place at three points. On
the 30th the town capitulated. Thus within exactly one week from the
firing of the pistol shot by the supposed butterwoman, this fort and
town, which had so long resisted the efforts of the States, and were such
important possessions of the Spaniards, fell into the hands of Maurice.
The terms of surrender were easy. The city being more important than its
garrison, the soldiers were permitted to depart with bag and baggage. The
citizens were allowed three days to decide whether to stay under loyal
obedience to the States-General, or to take their departure. Those who
chose to remain were to enjoy all the privileges of citizens of the
United Provinces.
But very few substantial citizens were left, for such had been the
tyranny, the misery, and the misrule during the long occupation by a
foreign soldiery of what was once a thriving Dutch town, that scarcely
anybody but paupers and vagabonds were left. One thousand houses were
ruined and desolate. It is superfluous to add that the day of its
restoration to the authority of the Union was the beginning of its
renewed prosperity.
Maurice, having placed a national garrison in the place, marched the same
evening straight upon Deventer, seven miles farther down the river,
without pausing to sleep upon his victory. His artillery and munitions
were sent rapidly down the Yssel.
Within five days he had thoroughly invested the city, and brought
twenty-eight guns to bear upon the weakest part of its defences.
It was a large, populous, well-built town, once a wealthy member of the
Hanseatic League, full of fine buildings, both public and private, the
capital of the rich and fertile province of Overyssel, and protected by a
strong wall and moat--as well-fortified a place as could be found in the
Netherlands. The garrison consisted of fourteen hundred Spaniards and
Walloons, under the command of Count Herman van den Berg, first cousin of
Prince Maurice.
No sooner had the States army come before the city than a Spanish captain
observed--"We shall now have a droll siege--cousins on the outside,
cousins on the inside. There will be a sham fight or two, and then the
cousins will make it up, and arrange matters to suit themselves."
Such hints had deeply wounded Van den Berg, who was a fervent Catholic,
and as loyal a servant to Philip II. as he could have been, had that
monarch deserved, by the laws of nature and by his personal services and
virtues, to govern all the swamps of Friesland. He slept on the gibe,
having ordered all the colonels and captains of the garrison to attend at
solemn mass in the great church the next morning. He there declared to
them all publicly that he felt outraged at the suspicions concerning his
fidelity, and after mass he took the sacrament, solemnly swearing never
to give up the city or even to speak of it until he had made such
resistance that he must be carried from the breach. So long as he could
stand or sit he would defend the city entrusted to his care.
The whole council who had come from Zutphen to Maurice's camp were
allowed to deliberate concerning the siege. The enemy had been seen
hovering about the neighbourhood in considerable numbers, but had not
ventured an attempt to throw reinforcements into the place. Many of the
counsellors argued against the siege. It was urged that the resistance
would be determined and protracted, and that the Duke of Parma was sure
to take the field in person to relieve so important a city, before its
reduction could be effected.
But Maurice had thrown a bridge across the Yssel above, and another below
the town, had carefully and rapidly taken measures in the success of
which he felt confident, and now declared that it would be cowardly and
shameful to abandon an enterprise so well begun.
The city had been formally summoned to surrender, and a calm but most
decided refusal had been returned.
On the 9th June the batteries began playing, and after four thousand six
hundred shots a good breach had been effected in the defences along the
Kaye--an earthen work lying between two strong walls of masonry.
The breach being deemed practicable, a storm was ordered. To reach the
Kaye it was necessary to cross a piece of water called the Haven, over
which a pontoon bridge was hastily thrown. There was now a dispute among
the English, Scotch, and Netherlanders for precedence in the assault. It
was ultimately given to the English, in order that the bravery of that
nation might now on the same spot wipe out the disgrace inflicted upon
its name by the treason of Sir William Stanley. The English did their
duty well and rushed forward merrily, but the bridge proved too short.
Some sprang over and pushed boldly for the breach. Some fell into the
moat and were drowned. Others, sustained by the Netherlanders under
Solms, Meetkerke, and Brederode, effected their passage by swimming,
leaping, or wading, so that a resolute attack was made. Herman van den
Berg met them in the breach at the head of seven companies. The defenders
were most ferocious in their resistance. They were also very drunk. The
count had placed many casks of Rhenish and of strong beer within reach,
and ordered his soldiers to drink their fill as they fought. He was
himself as vigorous in his potations as he was chivalrous with sword and
buckler. Two pages and two lieutenants fell at his side, but still he
fought at the head of his men with a desperation worthy of his vow, until
he fell wounded in the eye and was carried from the place.
Notwithstanding this disaster to the commander of the town, the
assailants were repulsed, losing two hundred-and twenty-five in killed
and wounded--Colonel Meetkerke and his brother, two most valuable Dutch
officers, among them.
During the whole of the assault, a vigorous cannonade had been kept up
upon other parts of the town, and houses and church-towers were toppling
down in all directions. Meanwhile the inhabitants--for it was
Sunday--instead of going to service were driven towards the breach by the
serjeant-major, a truculent Spaniard, next in command to Van den Berg,
who ran about the place with a great stick, summoning the Dutch burghers
to assist the Spanish garrison on the wall. It was thought afterwards
that this warrior would have been better occupied among the soldiers, at
the side of his commander.
A chivalrous incident in the open field occurred during the assault. A
gigantic Albanian cavalry officer came prancing out of Deventer into the
spaces between the trenches, defying any officer in the States' army to
break a lance with him. Prince Maurice forbade any acceptance of the
challenge, but Lewis van der Cathulle, son of the famous Ryhove of Ghent,
unable to endure the taunts and bravado of this champion, at last
obtained permission to encounter him in single combat. They met
accordingly with much ceremony, tilted against each other, and shivered
their lances in good style, but without much effect. The Albanian then
drew a pistol. Cathulle had no weapon save a cutlass, but with this
weapon he succeeded in nearly cutting off the hand which held the pistol.
He then took his enemy prisoner, the vain-glorious challenger throwing
his gold chain around his conqueror's neck in token of his victory.
Prince Maurice caused his wound to be bound up and then liberated him,
sending him into the city with a message to the governor.
During the following night the bridge, over which the assailants had
nearly forced their way into the town, was vigorously attacked by the
garrison, but Count Lewis William, in person, with a chosen band defended
it stoutly till morning, beating back the Spaniards with heavy loss in a
sanguinary midnight contest.
Next morning there was a unanimous outcry on the part of the besieged for
a capitulation. It was obvious that, with the walls shot to ruins as they
had been, the place was no longer tenable against Maurice's superior
forces. A trumpet was sent to the prince before the dawn of day, and on
the 10th of June, accordingly, the place capitulated.
It was arranged that the garrison should retire with arms and baggage
whithersoever they chose. Van den Berg stipulated nothing in favour of
the citizens, whether through forgetfulness or spite does not distinctly
appear. But the burghers were received like brothers. No plunder was
permitted, no ransom demanded, and the city took its place among its
sisterhood of the United Provinces.
Van den Berg himself was received at the prince's head, quarters with
much cordiality. He was quite blind; but his wound seemed to be the
effect of exterior contusions, and he ultimately recovered the sight of
one eye. There was mach free conversation between himself and his cousins
during the brief interval in which he was their guest.
"I've often told Verdugo," said he, "that the States had no power to make
a regular siege, nor to come with proper artillery into the field, and he
agreed with me. But we were both wrong, for I now see the contrary."
To which Count Lewis William replied with a laugh: "My dear cousin, I've
observed that in all your actions you were in the habit of despising us
Beggars, and I have said that you would one day draw the shortest straw
in consequence. I'm glad to hear this avowal from your own lips." Herman
attempted no reply but let the subject drop, seeming to regret having
said so much.
Soon afterwards he was forwarded by Maurice in his own coach to Ulff,
where he was attended by the prince's body physician till he was
re-established in health.
Thus within ten days of his first appearance before its walls, the city
of Deventer, and with it a whole province, had fallen into the hands of
Maurice. It began to be understood that the young pedant knew something
about his profession, and that he had not been fagging so hard at the
science of war for nothing.
The city was in a sorry plight when the States took possession of it. As
at Zutphen, the substantial burghers had wandered away, and the foreign
soldiers bivouacking there so long had turned the stately old Hanseatic
city into a brick and mortar wilderness. Hundreds of houses had been
demolished by the garrison, that the iron might be sold and the woodwork
burned for fuel; for the enemy had conducted himself as if feeling in his
heart that the occupation could not be a permanent one, and as if
desirous to make the place as desolate as possible for the Beggars when
they should return.
The dead body of the traitor York, who had died and been buried in
Deventer, was taken from the tomb, after the capture of the city, and
with the vulgar ferocity so characteristic of the times, was hung, coffin
and all, on the gibbet for the delectation of the States' soldiery.
Maurice, having thus in less than three weeks recovered two most
important cities, paused not an instant in his career but moved at once
on Groningen. There was a strong pressure put upon him to attempt the
capture of Nymegen, but the understanding with the Frisian stadholders
and his troops had been that the enterprise upon Groningen should follow
the reduction of Deventer.
On the 26th June Maurice appeared before Groningen. Next day, as a
precautionary step, he moved to the right and attacked the strong city of
Delfzyl. This place capitulated to him on the 2nd July. The fort of
Opslag surrendered on the 7th July. He then moved to the west of
Groningen, and attacked the forts of Yementil and Lettebaest, which fell
into his hands on the 11th July. He then moved along the Nyenoort through
the Seven Wolds and Drenthe to Steenwyk, before which strongly fortified
city he arrived on the 15th July.
Meantime, he received intercepted letters from Verdugo to the Duke of
Parma, dated 19th June from Groningen. In these, the Spanish stadholder
informed Farnese that the enemy was hovering about his neighbourhood, and
that it would be necessary for the duke to take the field in person in
considerable force, or that Groningen would be lost, and with it the
Spanish forces in the province. He enclosed a memorial of the course
proper to be adopted by the duke for his relief.
Notwithstanding the strictness by which Philip had tied his great
general's hands, Farnese felt the urgency of the situation. By the end of
June, accordingly, although full of his measures for marching to the
relief of the Leaguers in Normandy, he moved into Gelderland, coming by
way of Xanten, Rees, and neighbouring places. Here he paused for a moment
perplexed, doubting whether to take the aggressive in Gelderland or to
march straight to the relief of Groningen. He decided that it was better
for the moment to protect the line of the Waal. Shipping his army
accordingly into the Batavian Island or Good-meadow (Bet-uwe), which lies
between the two great horns of the Rhine, he laid siege to Fort
Knodsenburg, which Maurice had built the year before, on the right bank
of the Waal for the purpose of attacking Nymegen. Farnese, knowing that
the general of the States was occupied with his whole army far away to
the north, and separated from him by two great rivers, wide and deep, and
by the whole breadth of that dangerous district called the Foul-meadow
(Vel-uwe), and by the vast quagmire known as the Rouvenian morass, which
no artillery nor even any organised forces had ever traversed since the
beginning of the world, had felt no hesitation in throwing his army in
boats across the Waal. He had no doubt of reducing a not very powerful
fortress long before relief could be brought to it, and at the same time
of disturbing by his presence in Batavia the combinations of his young
antagonist in Friesland and Groningen.
So with six thousand foot and one thousand horse, Alexander came before
Knodsenburg. The news reached Maurice at Steenwyk on the 15th July.
Instantly changing his plans, the prince decided that Farnese must be
faced at once, and, if possible, driven from the ground, thinking it more
important to maintain, by concentration, that which had already been
gained, than to weaken and diffuse his forces in insufficient attempts to
acquire more. Before two days had passed, he was on the march southward,
having left Lewis William with a sufficient force to threaten Groningen.
Coming by way of Hasselt Zwol to Deventer, he crossed the Yssel on a
bridge of boats on the 18th of July, 1591 and proceeded to Arnhem. His
army, although excessively fatigued by forced marches in very hot
weather, over nearly impassable roads, was full of courage and
cheerfulness, having learned implicit confidence in their commander. On
the 20th he was at Arnhem. On the 22nd his bridge of boats was made, and
he had thrown his little army across the Rhine into Batavia, and
entrenched himself with his six thousand foot and fourteen hundred horse
in the immediate neighbourhood of Farnese--Foul-meadow and Good-meadow,
dyke, bog, wold, and quagmire, had been successfully traversed, and
within one week of his learning that the great viceroy of Philip had
reached the Batavian island, Maurice stood confronting that famous
chieftain in battle-array.
On the 22nd July, Farnese, after firing two hundred and eighty-five shots
at Fort Knodsenburg, ordered an assault, expecting that so trifling a
work could hardly withstand a determined onslaught by his veterans. To
his surprise they were so warmly received that two hundred of the
assailants fell at the first onset, and the attack was most conclusively
repulsed.
And now Maurice had appeared upon the scene, determined to relieve a
place so important for his ulterior designs. On the 24th July he sent out
a small but picked force of cavalry to reconnoitre the enemy. They were
attacked by a considerable body of Italian and Spanish horse from the
camp before Knodsenburg, including Alexander's own company of lancers
under Nicelli. The States troops fled before them in apparent dismay for
a little distance, hotly pursued by the royalists, until, making a sudden
halt, they turned to the attack, accompanied by five fresh companies of
cavalry and a thousand musketeers, who fell upon the foe from all
directions. It was an ambush, which had been neatly prepared by Maurice
in person, assisted by Sir Francis Vere. Sixty of the Spaniards and
Italians were killed and one hundred and fifty prisoners, including
Captain Nicelli, taken, while the rest of the party sought safety in
ignominious flight. This little skirmish, in which ten companies of the
picked veterans of Alexander Farnese had thus been utterly routed before
his eyes, did much to inspire the States troops with confidence in
themselves and their leader.
Parma was too experienced a campaigner, and had too quick an eye, not to
recognise the error which he had committed in placing the dangerous river
Waal, without a bridge; between himself and his supplies. He had not
dreamed that his antagonist would be capable of such celerity of movement
as he had thus displayed, and his first business now was to extricate
himself from a position which might soon become fatal. Without
hesitation, he did his best to amuse the enemy in front of the fort, and
then passed the night in planting batteries upon the banks of the river,
under cover of which he succeeded next day in transporting in ferry-boats
his whole force, artillery and: baggage, to the opposite shore, without
loss, and with his usual skill.
He remained but a short time in Nymegen, but he was hampered by the
express commands of the king. Moreover, his broken health imperatively
required that he should once more seek the healing influence of the
waters of Spa, before setting forth on his new French expedition.
Meanwhile, although he had for a time protected the Spanish possessions
in the north by his demonstration in Gelderland, it must be confessed
that the diversion thus given to the plans of Maurice was but a feeble
one.
Having assured the inhabitants of Nymegen that he would watch over the
city like the apple of, his eye, he took his departure on the 4th of
August for Spa. He was accompanied on his journey by his son, Prince
Ranuccio, just arrived from Italy.
After the retreat of Farnese, Maurice mustered his forces at Arnhem, and
found himself at the head of seven thousand foot and fifteen hundred
horse. It was expected by all the world that, being thus on the very
spot, he would forthwith proceed to reduce the ancient, wealthy, imperial
city of Nynegen. The garrison and burghers accordingly made every
preparation to resist the attack, disconcerted as they were, however, by
the departure of Parma, and by the apparent incapacity of Verdugo to
bring them effectual relief.
But to the surprise of all men, the States forces suddenly disappeared
from the scene, having been, as it were, spirited away by night-time,
along those silent watery highways and crossways of canal, river, and
estuary--the military advantages of which to the Netherlands, Maurice was
the first thoroughly to demonstrate. Having previously made great
preparations of munitions and provisions in Zeeland, the young general,
who was thought hard at work in Gelderland, suddenly presented himself on
the 19th September, before the gates of Hulst, on the border of Zeeland
and Brabant.
It was a place of importance from its situation, its possession by the
enemy being a perpetual thorn in the side of the States, and a constant
obstacle to the plans of Maurice. His arrangements having been made with
the customary, neatness, celerity, and completeness, he received the
surrender of the city on the fifth day after his arrival.
Its commander, Castillo, could offer no resistance; and was subsequently,
it is said, beheaded by order of the Duke of Parma for his negligence.
The place is but a dozen miles from Antwerp, which city was at the very,
moment keeping great holiday and outdoing itself in magnificent festivals
in honour of young Ranuccio. The capture of Hulst before his eyes was a
demonstration quite unexpected by the prince, and great was the wrath of
old Mondragon, governor of Antwerp, thus bearded in his den. The veteran
made immediate preparations for chastising the audacious Beggars of
Zeeland and their pedantic young commander, but no sooner had the
Spaniards taken the field than the wily foe had disappeared as magically
as he had come.
The Flemish earth seemed to have bubbles as the water hath, and while
Mondragon was beating the air in vain on the margin of the Scheld,
Maurice was back again upon the Waal, horse, foot, and artillery, bag,
baggage, and munition, and had fairly set himself down in earnest to
besiege Nymegen, before the honest burghers and the garrison had finished
drawing long breaths at their recent escape. Between the 14th and 16th
October he had bridged the deep, wide, and rapid river, had transported
eight thousand five hundred infantry and, sixteen companies of cavalry to
the southern side, had entrenched his camp and made his approaches, and
had got sixty-eight pieces of artillery into three positions commanding
the weakest part of the defences of the city between the Falcon Tower and
the Hoender gate. The fort of Knodsenburg was also ready to throw hot
shot across the river into the town. Not a detail in all these
preparations escaped the vigilant eye of the Commander-in-Chief, and
again and again was he implored not so recklessly to expose a life
already become precious to his country. On the 20th October, Maurice sent
to demand the surrender of the city. The reply was facetious but
decisive.
The prince was but a young suitor, it was said, and the city a spinster
not so lightly to be won. A longer courtship and more trouble would be
necessary.
Whereupon the suitor opened all his batteries without further delay, and
the spinster gave a fresh example of the inevitable fate of talking
castles and listening ladies.
Nymegen, despite her saucy answer on the 20th, surrendered on the 21st.
Relief was impossible. Neither Parma, now on his way to France, nor
Verdugo, shut up in Friesland, could come to the rescue of the place, and
the combinations of Maurice were an inexorable demonstration.
The terms of the surrender were similar to those accorded to Zutphen and
Deventer. In regard to the religious point it was expressly laid down by
Maurice that the demand for permission to exercise publicly the Roman
Catholic religion should be left to the decision of the States-General.
And thus another most important city had been added to the domains of the
republic. Another triumph was inscribed on the record of the young
commander. The exultation was very great throughout the United
Netherlands, and heartfelt was the homage rendered by all classes of his
countrymen to the son of William the Silent.
Queen Elizabeth wrote to congratulate him in warmest terms on his great
successes, and even the Spaniards began to recognise the merits of the
new chieftain. An intercepted letter from Verdugo, who had been foiled in
his efforts to arrest the career of Maurice, indicated great respect for
his prowess. "I have been informed," said the veteran, "that Count
Maurice of Nassau wishes to fight me. Had I the opportunity I assure you
that I should not fail him, for even if ill luck were my portion, I
should at least not escape the honour of being beaten by such a
personage. I beg you to tell him so with my affectionate compliments.
Yours, FRANCIS VERDUGO."
These chivalrous sentiments towards Prince Maurice had not however
prevented Verdugo from doing his best to assassinate Count Lewis William.
Two Spaniards had been arrested in the States camp this summer, who came
in as deserters, but who confessed "with little, or mostly without
torture," that they had been sent by their governor and colonel with
instructions to seize a favourable opportunity to shoot Lewis William and
set fire to his camp. But such practices were so common on the part of
the Spanish commanders as to occasion no surprise whatever.
It will be remembered that two years before, the famous Martin Schenk had
come to a tragic end at Nymegen. He had been drowned, fished up, hanged,
drawn, and quartered; after which his scattered fragments, having been
exposed on all the principal towers of the city, had been put in pickle
and deposited in a chest. They were now collected and buried triumphantly
in the tomb of the Dukes of Gelderland. Thus the shade of the grim
freebooter was at last appeased.
The government of the city was conferred upon Count Lewis William, with
Gerard de Jonge as his lieutenant. A substantial garrison was placed in
the city, and, the season now far advanced Maurice brought the military
operations of the year, saving a slight preliminary demonstration against
Gertruydenberg, to a close. He had deserved and attained--considerable
renown. He had astonished the leisurely war-makers and phlegmatic
veterans of the time, both among friends and foes, by the unexampled
rapidity of his movements and the concentration of his attacks. He had
carried great waggon trains and whole parks of siege artillery--the
heaviest then known--over roads and swamps which had been deemed
impassable even for infantry. He had traversed the length and breadth of
the republic in a single campaign, taken two great cities in Overyssel,
picked up cities and fortresses in the province of Groningen, and
threatened its capital, menaced Steenwyk, relieved Knodsenburg though
besieged in person by the greatest commander of the age, beaten the most
famous cavalry of Spain and Italy under the eyes of their chieftain,
swooped as it were through the air upon Brabant, and carried off an
important city almost in the sight of Antwerp, and sped back again in the
freezing weather of early autumn, with his splendidly served and
invincible artillery, to the imperial city of Nymegen, which Farnese had
sworn to guard like the apple of his eye, and which, with consummate
skill, was forced out of his grasp in five days.
"Some might attribute these things to blind fortune," says an honest
chronicler who had occupied important posts in the service of the prince
and of his cousin Lewis William, "but they who knew the prince's constant
study and laborious attention to detail, who were aware that he never
committed to another what he could do himself, who saw his sobriety,
vigilance, his perpetual study and holding of council with Count Lewis
William (himself possessed of all these good gifts, perhaps even in
greater degree), and who never found him seeking, like so many other
commanders, his own ease and comfort, would think differently."