CHAPTER XL.

Protraction of the siege of Ostend--Spanish invasion of Ireland--

Prince Maurice again on the march--Siege of Grave--State of the

archduke's army--Formidable mutiny--State of Europe--Portuguese

expedition to Java--Foundation there of the first Batavian trading

settlement--Exploits of Jacob Heemskerk--Capture of a Lisbon

carrack--Progress of Dutch commerce--Oriental and Germanic republics

--Commercial embassy from the King of Atsgen in Sumatra to the

Netherlands--Surrender of Grave--Privateer work of Frederic Spinola

--Destruction of Spinola's fleet by English and Dutch cruisers--

Continuation of the siege of Ostend--Fearful hurricane and its

effects--The attack--Capture of external forts--Encounter between

Spinola and a Dutch squadron--Execution of prisoners by the

archduke--Philip Fleming and his diary--Continuation of operations

before Ostend--Spanish veterans still mutinous--Their capital

besieged by Van den Berg--Maurice marches to their relief--

Convention between the prince and the mutineers--Great commercial

progress of the Dutch--Opposition to international commerce--

Organization of the Universal East India Company.

It would be desirable to concentrate the chief events of the siege of

Ostend so that they might be presented to the reader's view in a single

mass. But this is impossible. The siege was essentially the war--as

already observed--and it was bidding fair to protract itself to such an

extent that a respect for chronology requires the attention to be

directed for a moment to other topics.

The invasion of Ireland under Aquila, so pompously heralded as almost to

suggest another grand armada, had sailed in the beginning of the winter,

and an army of six thousand men had been landed at Kinsale. Rarely had

there been a better opportunity for the Celt to strike for his

independence. Shane Mac Neil had an army on foot with which he felt

confident of exterminating the Saxon oppressor, even without the

assistance of his peninsular allies; while the queen's army, severely

drawn upon as it had been for the exigencies of Vere and the States,

might be supposed unable to cope with so formidable a combination. Yet

Montjoy made short work of Aquila and Tyrone. The invaders, shut up in

their meagre conquest, became the besieged instead of the assailants.

Tyrone made a feeble attempt to relieve his Spanish allies, but was soon

driven into his swamps, the peasants would not rise; in spite of

proclamations and golden mountains of promise, and Aquila was soon glad

enough to sign a capitulation by which he saved a portion of his army. He

then returned, in transports provided by the English general, a much

discomfited man, to Spain instead of converting Ireland into a province

of the universal empire. He had not rescued Hibernia, as he stoutly

proclaimed at the outset his intention of doing, from the jaws of the

evil demon.

The States, not much wiser after the experience of Nieuport, were again

desirous that Maurice should march into Flanders, relieve Ostend, and

sweep the archduke into the sea. As for Vere, he proposed that a great

army of cavalry and infantry should be sent into Ostend, while another

force equally powerful should take the field as soon as the season

permitted. Where the men were to be levied, and whence the funds for

putting such formidable hosts in motion were to be derived, it was not

easy to say: "'Tis astonishing," said Lewis William, "that the evils

already suffered cannot open his eyes; but after all, 'tis no marvel. An

old and good colonel, as I hold him to be, must go to school before he

can become a general, and we must beware of committing any second folly,

govern ourselves according to our means and the art of war, and leave the

rest to God."

Prince Maurice, however; yielding as usual to the persuasions or

importunities of those less sagacious than himself; and being also much

influenced by the advice of the English queen and the French king, after

reviewing the most splendid army that even he had ever equipped and set

in the field, crossed the Waal at Nymegen, and the Meuse at Mook, and

then moving leisurely along Meuse--side by way of Sambeck, Blitterswyck,

and Maasyk, came past St. Truyden to the neighbourhood of Thienen, in

Brabant. Here he stood, in the heart of the enemy's country, and within a

day's march of Brussels. The sanguine portion of his countrymen and the

more easily alarmed of the enemy already thought it would be an easy

military promenade for the stadholder to march through Brabant and

Flanders to the coast, defeat the Catholic forces before Ostend, raise

the weary siege of that place, dictate peace to the archduke, and return

in triumph to the Hague, before the end of the summer.

But the experienced Maurice too well knew the emptiness of such dreams.

He had a splendid army--eighteen thousand foot and five thousand

horse--of which Lewis William commanded the battalia, Vere the right, and

Count Ernest the left, with a train of two thousand baggage wagons, and a

considerable force of sutlers and camp-followers. He moved so

deliberately, and with such excellent discipline, that his two wings

could with ease be expanded for black-mail or forage over a considerable

extent of country, and again folded together in case of sudden military

necessity. But he had no intention of marching through Brussels, Ghent,

and Bruges, to the Flemish coast. His old antagonist, the Admiral of

Arragon, lay near Thienen in an entrenched camp, with a force of at least

fifteen thousand men, while the archduke, leaving Rivas in command before

Ostend, hovered in the neighbourhood of Brussels, with as many troops as

could be spared from the various Flemish garrisons, ready to support the

admiral.

But Maurice tempted the admiral in vain with the chances of a general

action. That warrior, remembering perhaps too distinctly his disasters at

Nieuport, or feeling conscious that his military genius was more fitly

displayed in burning towns and villages in neutral territory, robbing the

peasantry, plundering gentlemen's castles and murdering the proprietors,

than it was like to be in a pitched battle with the first general of the

age, remained sullenly within his entrenchments. His position was too

strong and his force far too numerous to warrant an attack by the

stadholder upon his works. After satisfying himself, therefore, that

there was no chance of an encounter in Brabant except at immense

disadvantage, Maurice rapidly counter-marched towards the lower Meuse,

and on the 18th July laid siege to Grave. The position and importance of

this city have been thoroughly set before the reader in a former volumes

It is only necessary, therefore, to recal the fact that, besides being a

vital possession for the republic, the place was in law the private

property of the Orange family, having been a portion of the estate of

Count de Buren, afterwards redeemed on payment of a considerable sum of

money by his son-in-law, William the Silent, confirmed to him at the

pacification of Ghent, and only lost to his children by the disgraceful

conduct of Captain Hamart, which had cost that officer his head. Maurice

was determined at least that the place should not now slip through his

fingers, and that the present siege should be a masterpiece. His forts,

of which he had nearly fifty, were each regularly furnished with moat,

drawbridge, and bulwark. His counterscarp and parapet, his galleries,

covered ways and mines, were as elaborate, massive, and artistically

finished as if he were building a city instead of besieging one.

Buzanval, the French envoy, amazed at the spectacle, protested that his

works "were rather worthy of the grand Emperor of the Turks than of, a

little commonwealth, which only existed through the disorder of its

enemies and the assistance of its friends;" but he admitted the utility

of the stadholder's proceedings to be very obvious.

While the prince calmly sat before Grave, awaiting the inexorable hour

for burghers and garrison to surrender, the great Francis Mendoza,

Admiral of Arragon, had been completing the arrangements for his

exchange. A prisoner after the Nieuport battle, he had been assigned by

Maurice, as will be recollected, to his cousin, young Lewis Gunther,

whose brilliant services as commander of the cavalry had so much

contributed to the victory. The amount of ransom for so eminent a captive

could not fail to be large, and accordingly the thrifty Lewis William had

congratulated his brother on being able, although so young, thus to

repair the fortunes of the family by his military industry to a greater

extent than had yet been accomplished by any of the race. Subsequently,

the admiral had been released on parole, the sum of his ransom having

been fixed at nearly one hundred thousand Flemish crowns. By an agreement

now made by the States, with consent of the Nassau family, the prisoner

was definitely released, on condition of effecting the exchange of all

prisoners of the republic, now held in durance by Spain in any part of

the world. This was in lieu of the hundred thousand crowns which were to

be put into the impoverished coffers of Lewis Gunther. It may be

imagined, as the hapless prisoners afterwards poured in--not only from

the peninsula, but from more distant regions, whither they had been sent

by their cruel taskmasters, some to relate their sufferings in the

horrible dungeons of Spain, where they had long been expiating the crime

of defending their fatherland, others to relate their experiences as

chained galley-slaves in the naval service of their bitterest enemies,

many with shorn heads and long beards like Turks, many with crippled

limbs, worn out with chains and blows, and the squalor of disease and

filth--that the hatred for Spain and Rome did not glow any less fiercely

within the republic, nor the hereditary love for the Nassaus, to whose

generosity these poor victims were indebted for their deliverance, become

fainter, in consequence of these revelations. It was at first vehemently

disputed by many that the admiral could be exchanged as a prisoner of

war, in respect to the manifold murders and other crimes which would seem

to authorize his trial and chastisement by the tribunals of the republic.

But it was decided by the States that the sacred aegis of military law

must be held to protect even so bloodstained a criminal as he, and his

release was accordingly effected. Not long afterwards he took his

departure for Spain, where his reception was not enthusiastic.

From this epoch is to be dated a considerable reform in the laws

regulating the exchange of prisoners of war.--[Grotius]

While Maurice was occupied with the siege of Grave, and thus not only

menacing an important position, but spreading, danger and dismay over all

Brabant and Flanders, it was necessary for the archduke to detach so

large a portion of his armies to observe his indefatigable and scientific

enemy, as to much weaken the vigour of the operations before Ostend.

Moreover, the execrable administration of his finances, and the dismal

delays and sufferings of that siege; had brought about another mutiny--on

the whole, the most extensive, formidable, and methodical of all that had

hitherto occurred in the Spanish armies.

By midsummer, at least three thousand five hundred veterans, including a

thousand of excellent cavalry, the very best soldiers in the service, had

seized the city of Hoogstraaten. Here they established themselves

securely, and strengthened the fortifications; levying contributions in

corn, cattle, and every other necessary, besides wine, beer, and

pocket-money, from the whole country round with exemplary regularity. As

usual, disorder assumed the forms of absolute order. Anarchy became the

best organized of governments; and it would have been difficult to find

in the world--outside the Dutch commonwealth--a single community where

justice appeared to be so promptly administered as in this temporary

republic, founded upon rebellion and theft.

For; although a brotherhood of thieves, it rigorously punished such of

its citizens as robbed for their own, not for the public good. The

immense booty swept daily from the granges, castles; and villages of

Flanders was divided with the simplicity of early Christians, while the

success and steadiness of the operations paralyzed their sovereign, and

was of considerable advantage to the States.

Albert endeavoured in vain to negotiate with the rebels. Nuncius

Frangipani went to them in person, but was received with calm derision.

Pious exhortations might turn the keys of Paradise, but gold alone, he

was informed, would unlock the gates of Hoogstraaten. In an evil hour the

cardinal-archduke was tempted to try the effect of sacerdotal thunder.

The ex-archbishop of Toledo could not doubt that the terrors of the

Church would make those brown veterans tremble who could confront so

tranquilly the spring-tides of the North Sea, and the batteries of Vere

and Nassau. So he launched a manifesto, as highly spiced as a pamphlet of

Marnig, and as severe as a sentence of Torquemada. Entirely against the

advice of the States-General of the obedient provinces, he denounced the

mutineers as outlaws and accursed. He called on persons of every degree

to kill any of them in any way, at any time, or in any place, promising

that the slayer of a private soldier should receive a reward of "ten

crowns for each head" brought in, while for a subaltern officer's head

one hundred crowns were offered; for that of a superior officer two

hundred, and for that of the Eletto or chief magistrate, five hundred

crowns. Should the slayer be himself a member of the mutiny, his crime of

rebellion was to be forgiven, and the price of murder duly paid. All

judges, magistrates, and provost-marshals were ordered to make

inventories of the goods, moveable and immoveable, of the mutineers, and

of the clothing and other articles belonging to their wives and children,

all which property was to be brought in and deposited in the hands of the

proper functionaries of the archduke's camp, in order that it might be

duly incorporated into the domains of his Highness.

The mutineers were not frightened. The ban was an anachronism. If those

Spaniards and Italians had learned nothing by their much campaigning in

the land of Calvinism, they had at least unlearned their faith in bell,

book, and candle. It happened, too, that among their numbers were to be

found pamphleteers as ready and as unscrupulous as the scribes of the

archduke.

So there soon came forth and was published to the world, in the name of

the Eletto and council of Hoogstraaten, a formal answer to the ban.

"If scolding and cursing be payment," said the magistrates of the mutiny,

"then we might give a receipt in full for our wages. The ban is

sufficient in this respect; but as these curses give no food for our

bellies nor clothes for our backs, not preventing us, therefore, who have

been fighting so long for the honour and welfare of the archdukes from

starving with cold and hunger, we think a reply necessary in order to

make manifest how much reason these archdukes have for thundering forth

all this choler and fury, by which women and children may be frightened,

but at which no soldier will feel alarm.

"When it is stated," continued the mutineers, "that we have deserted our

banners just as an attempt was making by the archduke to relieve Grave,

we can only reply that the assertion proves how impossible it is to

practise arithmetic with disturbed brains. Passion is a bad

schoolmistress for the memory, but, as good friends, we will recal to the

recollection of your Highness that it was not your Highness, but the

Admiral of Arragon, that commanded the relieving force before that city.

"'Tis very true that we summon your Highnesses, and levy upon your

provinces, in order to obtain means of living; for in what other quarter

should we make application. Your Highnesses give us nothing except

promises; but soldiers are not chameleons, to live on such air. According

to every principle of law, creditors have a lien on the property of their

debtors.

"As to condemning to death as traitors and scoundrels those who don't

desire to be killed, and who have the means of killing such as attempt to

execute the sentence; this is hardly in accordance with the extraordinary

wisdom which has always characterized your Highnesses.

"As, to the confiscation of our goods, both moveable and immoveable, we

would simply make this observation:

"Our moveable goods are our swords alone, and they can only be moved by

ourselves. They are our immoveable goods as well; for should any one but

ourselves undertake to move them, we assure your Highnesses that they

will prove too heavy to be handled.

"As to the official register and deposit ordained of the money, clothing,

and other property belonging to ourselves, our wives and children, the

work may be done without clerks of inventory. Certainly, if the domains

of your Highnesses have no other sources of revenue than the proceeds of

this confiscation, wherewith to feed the ostrich-like digestions of those

about you, 'tis to be feared that ere long they will be in the same

condition as were ours, when we were obliged to come together in

Hoogstraaten to devise means to keep ourselves, our wives, and children

alive. And at that time we were an unbreeched people, like the

Indians--saving your Highnesses' reverence--and the climate here is too

cold for such costume. Your Highnesses, and your relatives the Emperor

and King of Spain, will hardly make your royal heads greasy with the fat

of such property as we possess, 'Twill also be a remarkable spectacle

after you have stripped our wives and children stark naked for the

benefit of your treasury, to see them sent in that condition, within

three days afterwards, out of the country, as the ban ordains.

"You order the ban to be executed against our children and our children's

children, but your Highness never learned this in the Bible, when you

were an archbishop, and when you expounded, or ought to have expounded,

the Holy Scriptures to your flock. What theology teaches your Highness to

vent your wrath upon the innocent?

"Whenever the cause of discontent is taken away, the soldiers will become

obedient and cheerful. All kings and princes may mirror themselves in the

bad government of your Highness, and may see how they fare who try to

carry on a war, while with their own hands they cut the sinews of war.

The great leaders of old--Cyrus, Alexander, Scipio, Caesar--were

accustomed, not to starve, but to enrich their soldiers. What did

Alexander, when in an arid desert they brought, him a helmet full of

water? He threw it on the sand, saying that there was only enough for

him, but not enough for his army.

"Your Highnesses have set ten crowns, and one hundred, and five hundred

crowns upon our heads, but never could find five hundred mites nor ten

mites to keep our souls and bodies together.

"Yet you have found means to live yourselves with pomp and luxury, far

exceeding that of the great Emperor Charles and much surpassing the

magnificence of your Highnesses' brothers, the emperor and the king."

Thus, and much more, the magistrates of the "Italian republic"--answering

their master's denunciations of vengeance, both in this world and the

next, with a humorous scorn very refreshing in that age of the world to

contemplate. The expanding influence of the Dutch commonwealth was

already making itself felt even in the ranks of its most determined foes.

The mutineers had also made an agreement with the States-General, by

which they had secured permission, in case of need, to retire within the

territory of the republic.

Maurice had written to them from his camp before Grave, and at first they

were disposed to treat him with as little courtesy as they had shown the

Nuncius; for they put the prince's letter on a staff, and fired at it as

a mark, assuring the trumpeter who brought it that they would serve him

in the same manner should he venture thither again. Very soon afterwards,

however, the Eletto and council, reproving the folly of their

subordinates, opened negotiations with the stadholder, who, with the

consent of the States, gave them preliminary permission to take refuge

under the guns of Bergenop-Zoom, should they by chance be hard pressed.

Thus throughout Europe a singular equilibrium of contending forces seemed

established. Before Ostend, where the chief struggle between imperialism

and republicanism had been proceeding for more than a year with equal

vigour, there seemed no possibility of a result. The sands drank up the

blood of the combatants on both sides, month after month, in summer; the

pestilence in town and camp mowed down Catholic and Protestant with

perfect impartiality during the winter, while the remorseless ocean swept

over all in its wrath, obliterating in an hour the patient toil of

months.

In Spain, in England, and Ireland; in Hungary, Germany, Sweden, and

Poland, men wrought industriously day by day and year by year, to destroy

each other, and to efface the products of human industry, and yet no

progress could fairly be registered. The Turk was in Buda, on the right

bank of the Danube, and the Christian in Pest, on the left, while the

crescent; but lately supplanted by the cross, again waved in triumph over

Stuhlweissenberg, capital city of the Magyars. The great Marshal Biron,

foiled in his stupendous treachery, had laid down his head upon the

block; the catastrophe following hard upon the madcap riot of Lord Essex

in the Strand and his tragic end. The troublesome and restless favourites

of Henry and of Elizabeth had closed their stormy career, but the designs

of the great king and the great queen were growing wider and wilder, more

false and more fantastic than ever, as the evening shadows of both were

lengthening.

But it was not in Europe nor in Christendom: alone during that twilight

epoch of declining absolutism, regal and sacerdotal, and the coming

glimmer of freedom, religious and commercial, that the contrast between

the old and new civilizations was exhibiting itself.

The same fishermen and fighting men, whom we have but lately seen sailing

forth from Zeeland and Friesland to confront the dangers of either pole,

were now contending in the Indian seas with the Portuguese monopolists of

the tropics.

A century long, the generosity of the Roman pontiff in bestowing upon

others what was not his property had guaranteed to the nation of Vasco de

Gama one half at least of the valuable possessions which maritime genius,

unflinching valour, and boundless cruelty had won and kept. But the

spirit of change was abroad in the world. Potentates and merchants under

the equator had been sedulously taught that there were no other white men

on the planet but the Portuguese and their conquerors the Spaniards, and

that the Dutch--of whom they had recently heard, and the portrait of

whose great military chieftain they had seen after the news of the

Nieuport battle had made the circuit of the earth--were a mere mob of

pirates and savages inhabiting the obscurest of dens. They were soon,

however, to be enabled to judge for themselves as to the power and the

merits of the various competitors for their trade.

Early in this year Andreas Hurtado de Mendoza with a stately fleet of

galleons and smaller vessels, more than five-and-twenty in all, was on

his way towards the island of Java to inflict summary vengeance upon

those oriental rulers who had dared to trade with men forbidden by his

Catholic Majesty and the Pope.

The city of Bantam was the first spot marked out for destruction, and it

so happened that a Dutch skipper, Wolfert Hermann by name, commanding

five trading vessels, in which were three hundred men, had just arrived

in those seas to continue the illicit commerce which had aroused the ire

of the Portuguese. His whole force both of men and of guns was far

inferior to that of the flag-ship alone of Mendoza. But he resolved to

make manifest to the Indians that the Batavians were not disposed to

relinquish their promising commercial relations with them, nor to turn

their backs upon their newly found friends in the hour of danger. To the

profound astonishment of the Portuguese admiral the Dutchman with his

five little trading ships made an attack on the pompous armada, intending

to avert chastisement from the king of Bantam. It was not possible for

Wolfert to cope at close quarters with his immensely superior adversary,

but his skill and nautical experience enabled him to play at what was

then considered long bowls with extraordinary effect. The greater

lightness and mobility of his vessels made them more than a match, in

this kind of encounter, for the clumsy, top-heavy, and sluggish marine

castles in which Spain and Portugal then went forth to battle on the

ocean. It seems almost like the irony of history, and yet it is the

literal fact, that the Dutch galleot of that day--hardly changed in two

and a half centuries since--"the bull-browed galleot butting through the

stream,"--[Oliver Wendell Holmes]--was then the model clipper,

conspicuous among all ships for its rapid sailing qualities and ease of

handling. So much has the world moved, on sea and shore, since those

simple but heroic days. And thus Wolfert's swift-going galleots circled

round and round the awkward, ponderous, and much-puzzled Portuguese

fleet, until by well-directed shots and skilful manoeuvring they had sunk

several ships, taken two, run others into the shallows, and, at last, put

the whole to confusion. After several days of such fighting, Admiral

Mendoza fairly turned his back upon his insignificant opponent, and

abandoned his projects upon Java. Bearing away for the Island of Amboyna

with the remainder of his fleet, he laid waste several of its villages

and odoriferous spice-fields, while Wolfert and his companions entered

Bantam in triumph, and were hailed as deliverers. And thus on the extreme

western verge of this magnificent island was founded the first trading

settlement of the Batavian republic in the archipelago of the

equator--the foundation-stone of a great commercial empire which was to

encircle the earth. Not many years later, at the distance, of a dozen

leagues from Bantam, a congenial swamp was fortunately discovered in a

land whose volcanic peaks rose two miles into the air, and here a town

duly laid out with canals and bridges, and trim gardens and stagnant

pools, was baptized by the ancient and well-beloved name of Good-Meadow

or Batavia, which it bears to this day.

Meantime Wolfert Hermann was not the only Hollander cruising in those

seas able to convince the Oriental mind that all Europeans save the

Portuguese were not pirates and savages, and that friendly intercourse

with other foreigners might be as profitable as slavery to the Spanish

crown.

Captain Nek made treaties of amity and commerce with the potentates of

Ternate, Tydor, and other Molucca islands. The King of Candy on the

Island of Ceylon, lord of the odoriferous fields of cassia which perfume

those tropical seas, was glad to learn how to exchange the spices of the

equator for the thousand fabrics and products of western civilization

which found their great emporium in Holland. Jacob Heemskerk, too, who

had so lately astonished the world by his exploits and discoveries during

his famous winter in Nova Zembla, was now seeking adventures and carrying

the flag and fame of the republic along the Indian and Chinese coasts.

The King of Johor on the Malayan peninsula entered into friendly

relations with him, being well pleased, like so many of those petty

rulers, to obtain protection against the Portuguese whom he had so long

hated and feared. He informed Heemskerk of the arrival in the straits of

Malacca of an immense Lisbon carrack, laden with pearls and spices,

brocades and precious-stones, on its way to Europe, and suggested an

attack. It is true that the roving Hollander merely commanded a couple of

the smallest galleots, with about a hundred and thirty men in the two.

But when was Jacob Heemskerk ever known to shrink from an

encounter--whether from single-handed combat with a polar bear, or from

leading a forlorn hope against a Spanish fort, or from assailing a

Portuguese armada. The carrack, more than one thousand tons burthen,

carried seventeen guns, and at least eight times as many men as he

commanded. Nevertheless, after a combat of but brief duration Heemskerk

was master of the carrack: He spared the lives of his seven hundred

prisoners, and set them on shore before they should have time to discover

to what a handful of Dutchmen they had surrendered. Then dividing about a

million florins' worth of booty among his men, who doubtless found such

cruising among the spice-islands more attractive than wintering at the

North Pole, he sailed in the carrack for Macao, where he found no

difficulty in convincing the authorities of the celestial empire that the

friendship of the Dutch republic was worth cultivating. There was soon to

be work in other regions for the hardy Hollander--such as was to make the

name of Heemskerk a word to conjure with down to the latest posterity.

Meantime he returned to his own country to take part in the great

industrial movements which were to make this year an epoch in commercial

history.

The conquerors of Mendoza and deliverers of Bantam had however not paused

in their work. From Java they sailed to Banda; and on those volcanic

islands of nutmegs and cloves made, in the name of their commonwealth, a

treaty with its republican antipodes. For there was no king to be found

in that particular archipelago, and the two republics, the Oriental and

the Germanic, dealt with each other with direct and becoming simplicity.

Their convention was in accordance with the commercial ideas of the day,

which assumed monopoly as the true basis of national prosperity. It was

agreed that none but Dutchmen should ever purchase the nutmegs of Banda,

and that neither nation should harbour refugees from the other. Other

articles, however; showed how much farther, the practice of political and

religious liberty had advanced than had any theory of commercial freedom.

It was settled that each nation should judge its own citizens according

to its own laws, that neither should interfere by force with the other in

regard to religious matters, but that God should be judge over them all.

Here at least was progress beyond the system according to which the Holy

Inquisition furnished the only enginry of civilization. The guardianship

assumed by Holland over these children of the sun was at least an

improvement on the tyranny which roasted them alive if they rejected

religious dogmas which they could not comprehend, and which proclaimed

with fire, sword, and gibbet that the Omnipotent especially forbade the

nutmeg trade to all but the subjects, of the most Catholic king.

In Atsgen or Achim, chief city of Sumatra, a treaty was likewise made

with the government of the place, and it was arranged that the king of

Atsgen should send over an embassy to the distant but friendly republic.

Thus he might judge whether the Hollanders were enemies of all the world,

as had been represented to him, or only of Spain; whether their knowledge

of the arts and sciences, and their position among the western nations

entitled them to respect, and made their friendship desirable; or whether

they were only worthy of the contempt which their royal and aristocratic

enemies delighted to heap upon their heads. The envoys sailed from

Sumatra on board the same little fleet which, under the command of

Wolfert Hermann, had already done such signal service, and on their way

to Europe they had an opportunity of seeing how these republican sailors

could deal with their enemies on the ocean.

Off St. Helena an immense Portuguese carrack richly laden and powerfully

armed, was met, attacked, and overpowered by the little merchantmen with

their usual audacity and skill. A magnificent booty was equitably divided

among the captors, the vanquished crew were set safely on shore; and the

Hollanders then pursued their home voyage without further adventures.

The ambassadors; with an Arab interpreter, were duly presented to Prince

Maurice in the lines before the city of Grave. Certainly no more

favourable opportunity could have been offered them for contrasting the

reality of military power, science, national vigour; and wealth, which

made the republic eminent among the nations, with the fiction of a horde

of insignificant and bloodthirsty savages which her enemies had made so

familiar at the antipodes. Not only were the intrenchments bastions,

galleries, batteries, the discipline and equipment of the troops, a

miracle in the eyes of these newly arrived Oriental ambassadors, but they

had awakened the astonishment of Europe, already accustomed to such

spectacles. Evidently the amity of the stadholder and his commonwealth

was a jewel of price, and the King of Achim would have been far more

barbarous than he had ever deemed the Dutchmen to be, had he not well

heeded the lesson which he had sent so far to learn.

The chief of the legation, Abdulzamar, died in Zeeland, and was buried

with honourable obsequies at Middleburg, a monument being raised to his

memory. The other envoys returned to Sumatra, fully determined to

maintain close relations with the republic.

There had been other visitors in Maurice's lines before Grave at about

the same period. Among others, Gaston Spinola, recently created by the

archduke Count of Bruay, had obtained permission to make a visit to a

wounded relative, then a captive in the republican camp, and was

hospitably entertained at the stadholder's table. Maurice, with soldierly

bluntness, ridiculed the floating batteries, the castles on wheels, the

sausages, and other newly-invented machines, employed before Ostend, and

characterized them as rather fit to catch birds with than to capture a

city, defended by mighty armies and fleets.

"If the archduke has set his heart upon it, he had far better try to buy

Ostend," he observed.

"What is your price?" asked the Italian; "will you take 200,000 ducats?"

"Certainly not less than a million and a half," was the reply; so highly

did Maurice rate the position and advantages of the city. He would

venture to prophesy, he added, that the siege of Ostend would last as

long as the siege of Troy.

"Ostend is no Troy," said Spinola with a courtly flourish, "although

there are certainly not wanting an Austrian Agamemnon, a Dutch Hector,

and an Italian Achilles." The last allusion was to the speaker's namesake

and kinsman, the Marquis Anibrose Spinola, of whom much was to be heard

in the world from that time forth.

Meantime, although so little progress had been made at Ostend, Maurice

had thoroughly done his work before Grave. On the 18th September the

place surrendered, after sixty days' siege, upon the terms usually

granted by the stadholder. The garrison was to go out with the honours of

war. Those of the inhabitants who wished to leave were to leave; those

who preferred staying were to stay; rendering due allegiance to the

republic, and abstaining in public from the rites of the Roman Church,

without being exposed, however, to any inquiries as to their religious

opinions, or any interference within their households.

The work went slowly on before Ostend. Much effect had been produced,

however, by the operations of the archduke's little naval force. The

galley of that day, although a child's toy as compared with the wonders

of naval architecture of our own time, was an effective machine enough to

harass fishing and coasting vessels in creeks and estuaries, and along

the shores of Holland and Zeeland during tranquil weather.

The locomotive force of these vessels consisted of galley-slaves, in

which respect the Spaniards had an advantage over other nations; for they

had no scruples in putting prisoners of war into chains and upon the

benches of the rowers. Humanity--"the law of Christian piety," in the

words of the noble Grotius--forbade the Hollanders from reducing their

captives to such horrible slavery, and they were obliged to content

themselves with condemned criminals, and with the few other wretches whom

abject poverty and the impossibility of earning other wages could induce

to accept the service. And as in the maritime warfare of our own day, the

machinery--engines, wheels, and boilers--is the especial aim of the

enemy's artillery, so the chain-gang who rowed in the waist of the

galley, the living enginry, without which the vessel became a useless

tub, was as surely marked out for destruction whenever a sea-fight took

place.

The Hollanders did not very much favour this species of war-craft, both

by reason of the difficulty of procuring the gang, and because to a true

lover of the ocean and of naval warfare the galley was about as clumsy

and amphibious a production as could be hoped of human perverseness. High

where it should be low. Exposed, flat, and fragile, where elevation and

strength were indispensable--encumbered and top-heavy where it should be

level and compact, weak in the waist, broad at stem and stern, awkward in

manoeuvre, helpless in rough weather, sluggish under sail, although

possessing the single advantage of being able to crawl over a smooth sea

when better and faster ships were made stationary by absolute calm, the

galley was no match for the Dutch galleot, either at close quarters or in

a breeze.

Nevertheless for a long time there had been a certain awe produced by the

possibility of some prodigious but unknown qualities in these outlandish

vessels, and already the Hollanders had tried their hand at constructing

them. On a late occasion a galley of considerable size, built at Dort,

had rowed past the Spanish forts on the Scheld, gone up to Antwerp, and

coolly cut out from the very wharves of the city a Spanish galley of the

first class, besides seven war vessels of lesser dimensions, at first

gaining advantage by surprise, and then breaking down all opposition in a

brilliant little fight. The noise of the encounter summoned the citizens

and garrison to the walls, only to witness the triumph achieved by Dutch

audacity, and to see the victors dropping rapidly down the river, laden

with booty and followed by their prizes. Nor was the mortification of

these unwilling spectators diminished when the clear notes of a bugle on

board the Dutch galley brought to their ears the well-known melody of

"Wilhelmus of Nassau," once so dear to every patriotic heart in Antwerp,

and perhaps causing many a renegade cheek on this occasion to tingle with

shame.

Frederic Spinola, a volunteer belonging to the great and wealthy Genoese

family of that name, had been performing a good deal of privateer work

with a small force of galleys which he kept under his command at Sluys.

He had succeeded in inflicting so much damage upon the smaller

merchantmen of the republic, and in maintaining so perpetual a panic in

calm weather among the seafaring multitudes of those regions, that he was

disposed to extend the scale of his operations. On a visit to Spain he

had obtained permission from Government to employ in this service eight

great galleys, recently built on the Guadalquivir for the Royal Navy. He

was to man and equip them at his own expense, and was to be allowed the

whole of the booty that might result from his enterprise. Early in the

autumn he set forth with his eight galleys on the voyage to Flanders,

but, off Cezimbra, on the Portuguese coast, unfortunately fell in with

Sir Robert Mansell, who; with a compact little squadron of English

frigates, was lying in wait for the homeward-bound India fleet on their

entrance to Lisbon. An engagement took place, in which Spinola lost two

of his galleys. His disaster might have been still greater, had not an

immense Indian carrack, laden with the richest merchandize, just then

hove in sight, to attract his conquerors with a hope of better

prize-money than could be expected from the most complete victory over

him and his fleet.

With the remainder of his vessels Spinola crept out of sight while the

English were ransacking the carrack. On the 3rd of October he had entered

the channel with a force which, according to the ideas of that day, was

still formidable. Each of his galleys was of two hundred and fifty slave

power, and carried, beside the chain-gang, four hundred fighting men. His

flag-ship was called the St. Lewis; the names of the other vessels being

the St. Philip, the Morning Star, the St. John, the Hyacinth, and the

Padilla. The Trinity and the Opportunity had been destroyed off Cezimbra.

Now there happened to be cruising just then in the channel, Captain Peter

Mol, master of the Dutch war-ship Tiger, and Captain Lubbertson,

commanding the Pelican. These two espied the Spanish squadron, paddling

at about dusk towards the English coast, and quickly gave notice to

Vice-Admiral John Kant, who in the States' ship Half-moon, with three

other war-galleots, was keeping watch in that neighbourhood. It was dead

calm as the night fell, and the galleys of Spinola, which had crept close

up to the Dover cliffs, were endeavouring to row their way across in the

darkness towards the Flemish coast, in the hope of putting unobserved

into the Gut of Sluys. All went well with Spinola till the moon rose;

but, with the moon, sprang up a steady breeze, so that the galleys lost

all their advantage. Nearly off Gravelines another States' ship, the

Mackerel, came in sight, which forthwith attacked the St: Philip, pouring

a broadside into her by which fifty men were killed. Drawing off from

this assailant, the galley found herself close to the Dutch admiral in

the Half-moon, who, with all sail set, bore straight down upon her,

struck her amidships with a mighty crash, carrying off her mainmast and

her poop, and then, extricating himself with difficulty from the wreck,

sent a tremendous volley of cannon-shot and lesser missiles straight into

the waist where sat the chain-gang. A howl of pain and terror rang

through the air, while oars and benches, arms, legs, and mutilated

bodies, chained inexorably together, floated on the moonlit waves. An

instant later, and another galleot bore down to complete the work,

striking with her iron prow the doomed St. Philip so straightly and

surely that she went down like a stone, carrying with her galley slaves,

sailors, and soldiers, besides all the treasure brought by Spinola for

the use of his fleet.

The Morning Star was the next galley attacked, Captain Sael, in a stout

galleot, driving at her under full sail, with the same accuracy and

solidity of shock as had been displayed in the encounter with the St.

Philip and with the same result. The miserable, top-heavy monster galley

was struck between mainmast and stern, with a blow which carried away the

assailant's own bowsprit and fore-bulwarks, but which--completely

demolished the stem of the galley, and crushed out of existence the

greater portion of the live machinery sitting chained and rowing on the

benches. And again, as the first enemy hauled off from its victim,

Admiral pant came up once more in the Half-moon, steered straight at the

floundering galley, and sent her with one crash to the bottom. It was not

very scientific practice perhaps. It was but simple butting, plain

sailing, good steering, and the firing of cannon at short pistol-shot.

But after all, the work of those unsophisticated Dutch skippers was done

very thoroughly, without flinching, and, as usual, at great odds of men

and guns. Two more of the Spanish galleys were chased into the shallows

near Gravelines, where they went to pieces. Another was wrecked near

Calais. The galley which bore Frederic Spinola himself and his fortunes

succeeded in reaching Dunkirk, whence he made his way discomfited, to

tell the tale of his disaster to the archduke at Brussels. During the

fight the Dutch admiral's boats had been active in picking up such of the

drowning crews, whether galley-slaves or soldiers, as it was possible to

save. But not more than two hundred were thus rescued, while by far the

greater proportion of those on board, probably three thousand in number,

perished, and the whole fleet, by which so much injury was to have been

inflicted on Dutch commerce, was, save one damaged galley, destroyed. Yet

scarcely any lives were lost by the Hollanders, and it is certain that

the whole force in their fleet did not equal the crew of a single one of

the enemy's ships. Neither Spinola nor the archduke seemed likely to make

much out of the contract. Meantime, the Genoese volunteer kept quiet in

Sluy's, brooding over schemes to repair his losses and to renew his

forays on the indomitable Zeelanders.

Another winter had now closed in upon Ostend, while still the siege had

scarcely advanced an inch. During the ten months of Governor Dorp's

administration, four thousand men had died of wounds or malady within the

town, and certainly twice as many in the trenches of the besieging force.

Still the patient Bucquoy went on, day after day, night after night,

month after month, planting his faggots and fascines, creeping forward

almost imperceptibly with his dyke, paying five florins each to the

soldiers who volunteered to bring the materials, and a double ducat to

each man employed in laying them. So close were they under the fire of

the town; that a life was almost laid down for every ducat, but the

Gullet, which it was hoped to close, yawned as wide as ever, and the

problem how to reduce a city, open by sea to the whole world, remained

without solution. On the last day of the year a splendid fleet of

transports arrived in the town, laden with whole droves of beeves and

flocks of sheep, besides wine and bread and beer enough to supply a

considerable city; so that market provisions in the beleaguered town were

cheaper than in any part of Europe.

Thus skilfully did the States-General and Prince Maurice watch from the

outside over Ostend, while the audacious but phlegmatic sea-captains

brought their cargoes unscathed through the Gullet, although Bucquoy's

batteries had now advanced to within seventy yards of the shore.

On the west side, the besiegers were slowly eating their way through the

old harbour towards the heart of the place. Subterranean galleries,

patiently drained of their water, were met by counter-galleries leading

out from the town, and many were the desperate hand-to-hand encounters,

by dim lanterns, or in total darkness, beneath the ocean and beneath the

earth; Hollander, Spaniard, German, Englishman, Walloon, digging and

dying in the fatal trenches, as if there had been no graves at home.

Those insatiable sand-banks seemed ready to absorb all the gold and all

the life of Christendom. But the monotony of that misery it is useless to

chronicle. Hardly an event of these dreary days has been left unrecorded

by faithful diarists and industrious soldiers, but time has swept us far

away from them, and the world has rolled on to fresher fields of carnage

and ruin. All winter long those unwearied, intelligent, fierce, and cruel

creatures toiled and fought in the stagnant waters, and patiently

burrowed in the earth. It seemed that if Ostend were ever lost it would

be because at last entirely bitten away and consumed. When there was no

Ostend left, it might be that the archduke would triumph.

As there was always danger that the movements on the east side might be

at last successful, it was the command of Maurice that the labours to

construct still another harbour should go on in case the Gullet should

become useless, as the old haven had been since the beginning of the

siege. And the working upon that newest harbour was as dangerous to the

Hollanders as Bucquoy's dike-building to the Spaniards, for the pioneers

and sappers were perpetually under fire from the batteries which the

count had at, last successfully established on the extremity of his work.

It was a piteous sight to see those patient delvers lay down their spades

and die, hour after hour, to be succeeded by their brethren only to share

their fate. Yet still the harbour building progressed; for the republic

was determined that the city should be open to the sea so long as the

States had a stiver, or a ship, or a spade.

While this deadly industry went on, the more strictly military operations

were not pretermitted day nor night. The Catholics were unwearied in

watching for a chance of attack, and the Hollanders stood on the ramparts

and in the trenches, straining eyes and ears through the perpetual icy

mists of that black winter to catch the sight and sound of a coming foe.

Especially the by-watches, as they were called, were enough to break down

constitutions of iron; for, all day and night, men were stationed in the

inundated regions, bound on pain of death to stand in the water and watch

for a possible movement of the enemy, until the waves should rise so high

as to make it necessary to swim. Then, until the tide fell again, there

was brief repose.

And so the dreary winter faded away at last into chill and blustering

spring. On the 13th of April a hurricane, such as had not occurred since

the siege began; raged across the ocean, deluging and shattering the

devoted town. The waters rose over dyke and parapet, and the wind swept

from the streets and ramparts every living thing. Not a soldier or sailor

could keep his feet, the chief tower of the church was blown into the

square, chimneys and windows crashed on all sides, and the elements had

their holiday, as if to prove how helpless a thing was man, however

fierce and determined, when the powers of Nature arose in their strength.

It was as if no siege existed, as if no hostile armies had been lying

nearly two years long close to each other, and losing no opportunity to

fly at each other's throats. The strife of wind and ocean gave a respite

to human rage.

It was but a brief respite. At nightfall there was a lull in the tempest,

and the garrison crept again to the ramparts. Instantly the departing

roar of the winds and waters were succeeded by fainter but still more

threatening sounds, and the sentinels and the drums and trumpets to rally

the garrison, when the attack came. The sleepless Spaniards were already

upon them. In the Porcupine fort, a blaze of wickerwork and building

materials suddenly illuminated the gathering gloom of night; and the loud

cries of the assailants, who had succeeded in kindling this fire by their

missiles, proclaimed the fierceness of the attack. Governor Dorp was

himself in the fort, straining every nerve to extinguish the flames, and

to hold this most important position. He was successful. After a brief

but bloody encounter the Spaniards were repulsed with heavy loss. All was

quiet again, and the garrison in the Porcupine were congratulating

themselves on their victory when suddenly the ubiquitous Philip Fleeting

plunged, with a face of horror, into the governor's quarters, informing

him that the attack on the redoubt had been a feint, and that the

Spaniards were at that very moment swarming all over the three external

forts, called the South Square, the West Square, and the Polder. These

points, which have been already described, were most essential to the

protection of the place, as without them the whole counterscarp was in

danger. It was to save those exposed but vital positions that Sir Francis

Vere had resorted to the slippery device of the last Christmas Eve but

one.

Dorp refused to believe the intelligence. The squares were well guarded,

the garrison ever alert. Spaniards were not birds of prey to fly up those

perpendicular heights, and for beings without wings the thing was

impossible. He followed Fleming through the darkness, and was soon

convinced that the impossible was true. The precious squares were in the

hands of the enemy. Nimble as monkeys, those yellow jerkined Italians,

Walloons, and Spaniards--stormhats on their heads and swords in their

teeth--had planted rope-ladders, swung themselves up the walls by

hundreds upon hundreds, while the fight had been going on at the

Porcupine, and were now rushing through the forts grinning defiance,

yelling and chattering with fierce triumph, and beating down all

opposition. It was splendidly done. The discomfited Dorp met small bodies

of his men, panic-struck, reeling out from their stronghold, wounded,

bleeding, shrieking for help and for orders. It seemed as if the

Spaniards had dropped from the clouds. The Dutch commandant did his best

to rally the fugitives, and to encourage those who had remained. All

night long the furious battle raged, every inch of ground being

contested; for both Catholics and Hollanders knew full well that this

triumph was worth more than all that had been gained for the archduke in

eighteen months of siege. Pike to pike, breast to breast, they fought

through the dark April night; the last sobs of the hurricane dying

unheard, the red lanterns flitting to and fro, the fireworks hissing in

every direction of earth and air, the great wicker piles, heaped up with

pitch and rosin, flaming over a scene more like a dance of goblins than a

commonplace Christian massacre. At least fifteen hundred were

killed--besiegers and besieged--during the storming of the forts and the

determined but unsuccessful attempt of the Hollanders to retake them. And

when at last the day had dawned, and the Spaniards could see the full

extent of their victory, they set themselves with--unusual alacrity to

killing such of the wounded and prisoners as were in their hands, while,

at the same time, they turned the guns of their newly acquired works upon

the main counterscarp of the town.

Yet the besieged--discomfited but undismayed lost not a moment in

strengthening their inner works, and in doing their best, day after day,

by sortie, cannonade, and every possible device, to prevent the foe from

obtaining full advantage of his success. The triumph was merely a local

one, and the patient Hollanders soon proved to the enemy that the town

was not gained by carrying the three squares, but that every inch of the

place was to be contested as hotly as those little redoubts had been.

Ostend, after standing nearly two years of siege, was not to be carried

by storm. A goodly slice of it had been pared off that April night, and

was now in possession of the archduke, but this was all. Meantime the

underground work was resumed on both sides.

Frederic Spinola, notwithstanding the stunning defeat sustained by him in

the preceding October, had not lost heart while losing all his ships. On

the contrary, he had been busy during the winter in building other

galleys. Accordingly, one fine morning in May, Counsellor Flooswyk, being

on board a war vessel convoying some empty transports from Ostend,

observed signs of mischief brewing as he sailed past the Gut of Sluys;

and forthwith gave notice of what he had seen to Admiral Joost de Moor,

commanding the blockading squadron. The counsellor was right. Frederic

Spinola meant mischief. It was just before sunrise of a beautiful

summer's day. The waves were smooth--not a breath of wind stirring--and

De Moor, who had four little war-ships of Holland, and was supported

besides by a famous vessel called the Black Galley of Zeeland, under

Captain Jacob Michelzoon, soon observed a movement from Sluys.

Over the flat and glassy surface of the sea, eight galleys of the largest

size were seen crawling slowly, like vast reptiles, towards his ..

position. Four lesser vessels followed in the wake of the great galleys.

The sails of the admiral's little fleet flapped idly against the mast. He

could only placidly await the onset. The Black Galley, however, moved

forward according to her kind; and was soon vigorously attacked by two

galleys of the enemy. With all the force that five hundred rowers could

impart, these two huge vessels ran straight into the Zeeland ship, and

buried their iron prows in her sides. Yet the Black Galley was made of

harder stuff than were those which had gone down in the channel the

previous autumn under the blows of John Kant. Those on board her, at

least, were made of tougher material than were galley-slaves and

land-soldiers. The ramming was certainly not like that of a thousand

horse-power of steam, and there was no very great display of science in

the encounter; yet Captain Jacob Michelzoon, with two enemy's ships thus

stuck to his sides, might well have given himself up for lost. The

disproportion of ships and men was monstrous. Beside the chain-gang, each

of Spinola's ships was manned by two hundred soldiers, while thirty-six

musketeers from the Flushing garrison were the only men-at-arms in De

Moor's whole squadron. But those amphibious Zeelanders and Hollanders,

perfectly at home in the water, expert in handling vessels, and excellent

cannoneers, were more than a match for twenty times their number of

landsmen. It was a very simple-minded, unsophisticated contest. The

attempt to board the Black Galley was met with determined resistance, but

the Zeeland sailors clambered like cats upon the bowsprits of the Spanish

galleys, fighting with cutlass and handspike, while a broadside or two

was delivered with terrible effect into the benches of the chained and

wretched slaves. Captain Michelzoon was killed, but his successor,

Lieutenant Hart, although severely wounded, swore that he would blow up

his ship with his own hands rather than surrender. The decks of all the

vessels ran with blood, but at last the Black Galley succeeded in beating

off her assailants; the Zeelanders, by main force, breaking off the

enemy's bowsprits, so that the two ships of Spinola were glad to sheer

off, leaving their stings buried in the enemy's body.

Next, four galleys attacked the stout little galleot of Captain Logier,

and with a very similar result. Their prows stuck fast in the bulwarks of

the ship, but the boarders soon found themselves the boarded, and, after

a brief contest, again the iron bowsprits snapped like pipe-stems, and

again the floundering and inexperienced Spaniards shrank away from the

terrible encounter which they had provoked. Soon afterwards, Joost de

Moor was assailed by three galleys. He received them, however, with

cannonade and musketry so warmly that they willingly obeyed a summons

from Spinola, and united with the flag-ship in one more tremendous onset

upon the Black Galley of Zeeland. And it might have gone hard with that

devoted ship, already crippled in the previous encounter, had not Captain

Logier fortunately drifted with the current near enough to give her

assistance, while the other sailing ships lay becalmed and idle

spectators. At last Spinola, conspicuous by his armour, and by

magnificent recklessness of danger, fell upon the deck of his galley,

torn to pieces with twenty-four wounds from a stone gun of the Black

Galley, while at nearly the same, moment a gentle breeze began in the

distance to ruffle the surface of the waters. More than a thousand men

had fallen in Spinola's fleet, inclusive of the miserable slaves, who

were tossed overboard as often as wounds made them a cumbrous part of the

machinery, and the galleys, damaged, discomfited, laden with corpses and

dripping with blood, rowed off into Sluys as speedily as they could move,

without waiting until the coming wind should bring all the sailing ships

into the fight, together with such other vessels under Haultain as might

be cruising in the distance. They succeeded in getting into the Gut of

Sluys, and so up to their harbour of refuge. Meantime, baldheaded,

weather-beaten Joost de Moor--farther pursuit being impossible--piped all

hands on deck, where officers and men fell on their knees, shouting in

pious triumph the 34th Psalm: "I will bless the Lord at all times, His

praise shall continually be in my mouth . . . . O magnify the Lord with

me, and let us exalt His name together." So rang forth the notes of

humble thanksgiving across the placid sea. And assuredly those hardy

mariners, having gained a victory with their little vessels over twelve

ships and three thousand men--a numerical force of at least ten times

their number,--such as few but Dutchmen could have achieved; had a right

to give thanks to Him from whom all blessings flow.

Thus ended the career of Frederic Spinola, a wealthy, gallant, high-born,

brilliant youth, who might have earned distinction, and rendered

infinitely better service to the cause of Spain and the archdukes, had he

not persuaded himself that he had a talent for seamanship. Certainly,

never was a more misplaced ambition, a more unlucky career. Not even in

that age of rash adventure, when grandees became admirals and

field-marshals because they were grandees, had such incapacity been shown

by any restless patrician. Frederic Spinola, at the age of thirty-two, a

landsman and a volunteer, thinking to measure himself on blue water with

such veterans as John Rant, Joost de Moor, and the other Dutchmen and

Zeelanders whom it was his fortune to meet, could hardly escape the doom

which so rapidly befell him.

On board the Black Galley Captain Michelznon, eleven of his officers, and

fifteen of his men were killed; Admiral de Moor was slightly wounded, and

had five of his men killed and twenty wounded; Captain Logier was wounded

in the foot, and lost fifteen killed and twelve wounded.

The number of those killed in Spinola's fleet has been placed as high as

fourteen hundred, including two hundred officers and gentlemen of

quality, besides the crowds of galley-slaves thrown overboard. This was

perhaps an exaggeration. The losses were, however, sufficient to put a

complete atop to the enterprise out of which the unfortunate Spinola had

conceived such extravagant hopes of fame and fortune.

The herring-smacks and other coasters, besides the transports passing to

and from Ostend, sailed thenceforth unmolested by any galleys from Sluys.

One unfortunate sloop, however, in moving out from the beleaguered city,

ran upon some shoals before getting out of the Gullet and thus fell a

prize to the besiegers. She was laden with nothing more precious than

twelve wounded soldiers on their way to the hospitals at Flushing. These

prisoners were immediately hanged, at the express command of the

archduke, because they had been taken on the sea where, according to his

highness, there were no laws of war.

The stadholder, against his will--for Maurice was never cruel--felt

himself obliged to teach the cardinal better jurisprudence and better

humanity for the future. In order to show him that there was but one

belligerent law on sea and on land, he ordered two hundred Spanish

prisoners within his lines to draw lots from an urn in which twelve of

the tickets were inscribed with the fatal word gibbet. Eleven of the

twelve thus marked by ill luck were at once executed. The twelfth, a

comely youth, was pardoned at the intercession of a young girl. It is not

stated whether or not she became his wife. It is also a fact worth

mentioning, as illustrating the recklessness engendered by a soldier's

life, that the man who drew the first blank sold it to one of his

comrades and plunged his hand again into the fatal urn. Whether he

succeeded in drawing the gibbet at his second trial has not been

recorded. When these executions had taken place in full view of the

enemy's camp, Maurice formally announced that for every prisoner

thenceforth put to death by the archduke two captives from his own army

should be hanged. These stern reprisals, as usual, put an end to the foul

system of martial murder.

Throughout the year the war continued to be exclusively the siege of

Ostend. Yet the fierce operations, recently recorded, having been

succeeded by a period of comparative languor, Governor Dorp at last

obtained permission to depart to repair his broken health. He was

succeeded in command of the forces within the town by Charles Van der

Noot, colonel of the Zeeland regiment which had suffered so much in the

first act of the battle of Nieuport. Previously to this exchange,

however, a day of solemn thanksgiving and prayer was set apart on the

anniversary of the beginning of the siege. Since the 5th of July, 1601,

two years had been spent by the whole power of the enemy in the attempt

to reduce this miserable village, and the whole result thus far had been

the capture of three little external forts. There seemed cause for

thanksgiving.

Philip Fleming, too, obtained a four weeks' holiday--the first in eleven

years--and went with his family outside the pestiferous and beleaguered

town. He was soon to return to his multifarious duties as auditor,

secretary, and chronicler of the city, and unattached aide-de-camp to the

commander-in-chief, whoever that might be; and to perform his duty with

the same patient courage and sagacity that had marked him from the

beginning. "An unlucky cannon-ball of the enemy," as he observes, did

some damage at this period to his diary, but it happened at a moment when

comparatively little was doing, so that the chasm was of less

consequence.

"And so I, Philip Fleming, auditor to the Council of War," he says with

homely pathos, "have been so continually employed as not to have obtained

leave in all these years to refresh, for a few days outside this town, my

troubled spirit after such perpetual work, intolerable cares, and

slavery, having had no other pleasure allotted me than with daily

sadness, weeping eyes, and heavy yearnings to tread the ramparts, and,

like a poor slave laden with fetters, to look at so many others sailing

out of the harbour in order to feast their souls in other provinces with

green fields and the goodly works of God. And thus it has been until it

has nearly gone out of my memory how the fruits of the earth, growing

trees, and dumb beasts appear to mortal eye."

He then, with whimsical indignation, alludes to a certain author who

pleaded in excuse for the shortcomings of the history of the siege the

damage done to his manuscripts by a cannon-ball. "Where the liar dreamt

of or invented his cannon-ball," he says, "I cannot tell, inasmuch as he

never saw the city of Ostend in his life; but the said cannon-ball, to my

great sorrrow, did come one afternoon through my office, shot from the

enemy's great battery, which very much damaged not his memoirs but mine;

taking off the legs and arms at the same time of three poor invalid

soldiers seated in the sun before my door and killing them on the spot,

and just missing my wife, then great with child, who stood by me with

faithfulness through all the sufferings of the bloody siege and presented

me twice during its continuance, by the help of Almighty God, with young

Amazons or daughters of war."

And so honest Philip Fleming went out for a little time to look at the

green trees and the dumb creatures feeding in the Dutch pastures.

Meantime the two armies--outside and within Ostend--went moiling on in

their monotonous work; steadily returning at intervals, as if by

instinct, to repair the ruin which a superior power would often inflict

in a half-hour on the results of laborious weeks.

In the open field the military operations were very trifling, the wager

of battle being by common consent fought out on the sands of Ostend, and

the necessities for attack and defence absorbing, the resources of each

combatant. France, England, and Spain were holding a perpetual diplomatic

tournament to which our eyes must presently turn, and the Sublime Realm

of the Ottoman and the holy Roman Empire were in the customary

equilibrium of their eternal strife.

The mutiny of the veterans continued; the "Italian republic" giving the

archduke almost as much trouble, despite his ban and edicts and outlawry,

as the Dutch commonwealth itself. For more than a twelvemonth the best

troops of the Spanish army had been thus established as a separate

empire, levying black-mail on the obedient provinces, hanging such of

their old officers as dared to remonstrate, and obeying their elected

chief magistrates with exemplary docility.

They had become a force of five thousand strong, cavalry and infantry

together, all steady, experienced veterans--the best and bravest soldiers

of Europe. The least of them demanded two thousand florins as owed to him

by the King of Spain and the archduke. The burghers of Bois-le-Duc and

other neighbouring towns in the obedient provinces kept watch and ward,

not knowing how soon the Spaniards might be upon them to reward them for

their obedience. Not a peasant with provisions was permitted by the

mutineers to enter Bois-le-Duc, while the priests were summoned to pay

one year's income of all their property on pain of being burned alive.

"Very much amazed are the poor priests at these proceedings," said Ernest

Nassau, "and there is a terrible quantity of the vile race within and

around the city. I hope one day to have the plucking of some of their

feathers myself."

The mutiny governed itself as a strict military democracy, and had caused

an official seal to be engraved, representing seven snakes entwined in

one, each thrusting forth a dangerous tongue, with the motto--

"tutto in ore

E sua Eccelenza in nostro favore."

"His Excellency" meant Maurice of Nassau, with whom formal articles of

compact had been arranged. It had become necessary for the archduke,

notwithstanding the steady drain of the siege of Ostend, to detach a

considerable army against this republic and to besiege them in their

capital of Hoogstraaten. With seven thousand foot and three thousand

cavalry Frederic Van den Berg took the field against them in the latter

part of July. Maurice, with nine thousand five hundred infantry and three

thousand horse, lay near Gertruydenberg. When united with the rebel

"squadron," two thousand five hundred strong, he would dispose of a force

of fifteen thousand veterans, and he moved at once to relieve the

besieged mutineers. His cousin Frederic, however, had no desire to

measure himself with the stadholder at such odds, and stole away from him

in the dark without beat of drum. Maurice entered Hoogstraaten, was

received with rapture by the Spanish and Italian veterans, and excited

the astonishment of all by the coolness with which he entered into the

cage of these dangerous serpents--as they called themselves--handling

them, caressing them, and being fondled by them in return. But the

veterans knew a soldier when they saw one, and their hearts warmed to the

prince--heretic though he were--more than they had ever done to the

unfrocked bishop who, after starving them for years, had doomed them to

destruction in this world and the next.

The stadholder was feasted and honoured by the mutineers during his brief

visit to Hoogatraaten, and concluded with them a convention, according to

which that town was to be restored to him, while they were to take

temporary possession of the city of Grave. They were likewise to assist,

with all their strength, in his military operations until they should

make peace on their own terms with the archduke. For two weeks after such

treaty they were not to fight against the States, and meantime, though

fighting on the republican side, they were to act as an independent corps

and in no wise to be merged in the stadholder's forces. So much and no

more had resulted from the archduke's excommunication of the best part of

his army. He had made a present of those troops to the enemy. He had also

been employing a considerable portion of his remaining forces in

campaigning against their own comrades. While at Grave, the mutineers, or

the "squadron" as they were now called, were to be permitted to practise

their own religious rites, without offering however, any interference

with the regular Protestant worship of the place. When they should give

up Grave, Hoogstraaten was to be restored to them if still in possession

of the States and they were to enter into no negotiations with the

archduke except with full knowledge of the stadholder.

There were no further military, operations of moment during the rest of

the year.

Much, more important, however, than siege, battle, or mutiny, to human

civilization, were the steady movements of the Dutch skippers and

merchants at this period. The ears of Europe were stunned with the

clatter of destruction going on all over Christendom, and seeming the

only reasonable occupation of Christians; but the little republic; while

fighting so heroically against the concentrated powers of despotism in

the West, was most industriously building up a great empire in the East.

In the new era just dawning, production was to become almost as

honourable and potent, a principle as destruction.

The voyages among the spicy regions of the equator--so recently wrested

from their Catholic and Faithful Majesties by Dutch citizens who did not

believe in Borgia--and the little treaties made with petty princes and

commonwealths, who for the first time ware learning that there were other

white men in the world beside the Portuguese, had already led to

considerable results. Before the close of, the previous year that great

commercial corporation had been founded--an empire within an empire; a

republic beneath a republic--a counting-house company which was to

organize armies, conquer kingdoms, build forts and cities, make war and

peace, disseminate and exchange among the nations of the earth the

various products of civilization, more perfectly than any agency hitherto

known, and bring the farthest disjoined branches of the human family into

closer, connection than had ever existed before. That it was a monopoly,

offensive to true commercial principles, illiberal, unjust, tyrannical;

ignorant of the very rudiments of mercantile philosophy; is plain enough.

For the sages of the world were but as clowns, at that period, in

economic science.

Was not the great financier of the age; Maximilian de Bethune, at that

very moment exhausting his intellect in devices for the prevention of all

international commerce even in Europe? "The kingdom of France," he

groaned, "is stuffed full of the manufactures of our neighbours, and it

is incredible what a curse to us are these wares. The import of all

foreign goods has now been forbidden under very great penalties." As a

necessary corollary to this madhouse legislation an edict was issued,

prohibiting the export of gold and silver from France, on pain, not only

of confiscation of those precious metals, but of the whole fortune of

such as engaged in or winked at the traffic. The king took a public oath

never to exempt the culprits from the punishment thus imposed, and, as

the thrifty Sully had obtained from the great king a private grant of all

those confiscations, and as he judiciously promised twenty-five per cent.

thereof to the informer, no doubt he filled his own purse while

impoverishing the exchequer.

The United States, not enjoying the blessings, of a paternal government,

against which they had been fighting almost half a century, could not be

expected to rival the stupendous folly of such political economy,

although certainly not emancipated from all the delusions of the age.

Nor are we to forget how very recently, and even dimly, the idea of

freedom in commerce has dawned upon nations, the freest of all in polity

and religion. Certainly the vices and shortcomings of the commercial

system now inaugurated by the republic may be justly charged in great

part to the epoch, while her vast share in the expanding and upward

movement which civilization, under the auspices of self-government;

self-help, political freedom, free thought, and unshackled science, was

then to undertake--never more perhaps to be permanently checked--must be

justly ascribed to herself.

It was considered accordingly that the existence of so many private

companies and copartnerships trading to the East was injurious to the

interests of commerce. Merchants arriving at the different Indian ports

would often find that their own countrymen had been too quick for them,

and that other fleets had got the wind out of their sails, that the

eastern markets had been stripped, and that prices had gone up to a

ruinous height, while on the other hand, in the Dutch cities, nutmegs and

cinnamon, brocades and indigo, were as plentiful as red herrings. It was

hardly to be expected at that day to find this very triumph of successful

traffic considered otherwise than as a grave misfortune, demanding

interference on the part of the only free Government then existing in the

world. That already free competition and individual enterprise, had made

such progress in enriching the Hollanders and the Javanese respectively

with a superfluity of useful or agreeable things, brought from the

farthest ends of the earth, seemed to the eyes of that day a condition of

things likely to end in a general catastrophe. With a simplicity, amazing

only to those who are inclined to be vain of a superior wisdom--not their

own but that of their wisest contemporaries--one of the chief reasons for

establishing the East India Company was stated to be the necessity of

providing against low prices of Oriental productions in Europe.

But national instinct is often wiser than what is supposed to be high

national statesmanship, and there can be no doubt that the true

foundation of the East India Company was the simple recognition of an

iron necessity. Every merchant in Holland knew full well that the

Portuguese and Spaniards could never be driven out of their commercial

strongholds under the equator, except by a concentration of the private

strength and wealth, of the mercantile community. The Government had

enough on its hands in disputing, inch by inch, at so prodigious an

expenditure of blood and treasure, the meagre territory with which nature

had endowed the little commonwealth. Private organisation, self-help;

union of individual purses and individual brains, were to conquer an

empire at the antipodes if it were to be won at all. By so doing, the

wealth of the nation and its power to maintain the great conflict with

the spirit of the past might be indefinitely increased, and the resources

of Spanish despotism proportionally diminished. It was not to be expected

of Jacob Heemskerk, Wolfert Hermann, or Joris van Spilberg, indomitable

skippers though they were, that each, acting on his own responsibility or

on that of his supercargo, would succeed every day in conquering a whole

Spanish fleet and dividing a million or two of prize-money among a few

dozen sailors. Better things even than this might be done by wholesome

and practical concentration on a more extended scale.

So the States-General granted a patent or charter to one great company

with what, for the time, was an enormous paid-up capital, in order that

the India trade might be made secure and the Spaniards steadily

confronted in what they had considered their most impregnable

possessions. All former trading companies were invited to merge

themselves in the Universal East India Company, which, for twenty-one

years, should alone have the right to trade to the east of the Cape of

Good Hope and to sail through the Straits of Magellan.

The charter had been signed on 20th March, 1602, and was mainly to the

following effect.

The company was to pay twenty-five thousand florins to the States-General

for its privilege. The whole capital was to be six million six hundred

thousand florins. The chamber of Amsterdam was to have one half of the

whole interest, the chamber of Zeeland one fourth; the chambers of the

Meuse, namely, Delft, Rotterdam, and the north quarter; that is to say,

Hoorn and Enkhuizen, each a sixteenth. All the chambers were to be

governed by the directors then serving, who however were to be allowed to

die out, down to the number of twenty for Amsterdam, twelve for Zeeland,

and seven for each of the other chambers. To fill a vacancy occurring

among the directors, the remaining members of the board were to nominate

three candidates, from whom the estates of the province should choose

one. Each director was obliged, to have an interest in the company

amounting to at least six thousand florins, except the directors for

Hoorn and Enkhuizen, of whom only three thousand should be required. The

general assembly of these chambers should consist of seventeen directors,

eight for Amsterdam, four for Zeeland, two for the Meuse, and two for the

north quarter; the seventeenth being added by turns from the chambers of

Zeeland, the Meuse, and the north quarter. This assembly was to be held

six years at Amsterdam, and then two years in Zeeland. The ships were

always to return to the port from which they had sailed. All the

inhabitants of the provinces had the right, within a certain time, to

take shares in the company. Any province or city subscribing for forty

thousand florins or upwards might appoint an agent to look after its

affairs.

The Company might make treaties with the Indian powers, in the name of

the States-General of the United Netherlands or of the supreme

authorities of the same, might build fortresses; appoint generals, and

levy troops, provided such troops took oaths of fidelity to the States,

or to the supreme authority, and to the Company. No ships, artillery, or

other munitions of war belonging to the Company were to be used in

service of the country without permission of the Company. The admiralty

was to have a certain proportion of the prizes conquered from the enemy.

The directors should not be liable in property or person for the debts of

the Company. The generals of fleets returning home were to make reports

on the state of India to the States.

Notification; of the union of all India companies with this great

corporation was duly sent to the fleets cruising in those regions, where

it arrived in the course of the year 1603.

Meantime the first fleet of the Company, consisting of fourteen vessels

under command of Admiral Wybrand van Warwyk, sailed before the end of

1602, and was followed towards the close of 1603 by thirteen other ships,

under Stephen van der Hagen?

The equipment of these two fleets cost two million two hundred thousand

florins.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Bestowing upon others what was not his property

Four weeks' holiday--the first in eleven years

Idea of freedom in commerce has dawned upon nations

Impossible it is to practise arithmetic with disturbed brains

Passion is a bad schoolmistress for the memory

Prisoners were immediately hanged

Unlearned their faith in bell, book, and candle

World has rolled on to fresher fields of carnage and ruin

HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, Volume 76, 1603-1604