same time commissioners, to Ostend. The quartermaster-general of the
army, Don Matteo Antonio, and Matteo Serrano, governor of Sluys, but
serving among the besiegers, were selected for this important business
as personages of ability, discretion, and distinction.
They reached the town, coming in of course from the western side, as
expeditiously as possible, but after nightfall. Before they arrived at
headquarters there suddenly arose, from some unknown cause, a great alarm
and beating to arms on the opposite or eastern side of the city. They
were entirely innocent of any participation in this uproar and ignorant
of its cause, but when they reached the presence of Sir Francis Vere they
found that warrior in a towering passion. There was cheating going on,
he exclaimed. The Spaniards, he cried, were taking advantage of these
negotiations, and were about, by dishonourable stratagem, to assault the
town.
Astounded, indignant, but utterly embarrassed, the grave Spaniards knew
not how to reply. They were still more amazed when the general, rising
to a still higher degree of exasperation, absolutely declined to exchange
another word with them, but ordered Captains Carpentier and St. Hilaire,
by whom they had been escorted to his quarters, to conduct them out of
the town again by the same road which had brought them there. There was
nothing for it but to comply, and to smother their resentment at such
extraordinary treatment as best they could. When they got to the old
harbour on the western side the tide had risen so high that it was
impossible to cross.
Nobody knew better than Vere, when he gave the order, that this would be
the case; so that when the escorting officers returned to state the fact,
he simply ordered them to take the Spaniards back by the Gullet or
eastern side. The strangers were not very young men, and being much
fatigued with wandering to and fro in the darkness over the muddy roads,
they begged permission to remain all night in Ostend, if it were only
in a guardhouse. But Vere was inexorable, after the duplicity which
he affected to have discovered on the part of the enemy. So the
quartermaster-general and the governor of Sluys, much to the detriment
of their dignity, were forced once more to tramp through the muddy
streets. And obeying their secret instructions, the escort led them
round and round through the most miry and forlorn parts of the town, so
that, sinking knee-deep at every step into sloughs and quicksands, and
plunging about through the mist and sleet of a dreary December's night,
they at last reached the precincts of the Spanish half-moon on the
Gullet, be-draggled from head to foot and in a most dismal and exhausted
condition.
"Ah, the villainous town of Ostend!" exclaimed Serrano, ruefully
contemplating his muddy boots and imploring at least a pipe of tobacco.
He was informed, however, that no such medical drugs were kept in the
fort, but that a draught of good English ale was much at their service.
The beer was brought in four foaming flagons, and, a little refreshed by
this hospitality, the Spaniards were put in a boat and rowed under the
guns of the fort across the Gullet and delivered to their own sentries on
the outposts of Bucquoy's entrenchments. By this time it was midnight,
so that it was necessary for them to remain for the night in the eastern
encampment before reporting themselves at Fort St. Albert.
Thus far Vere's comedy had been eminently successful, and by taking
advantage of the accidental alarm and so adroitly lashing himself into a
fictitious frenzy, the general had gained nearly twenty-four additional
hours of precious time on which he had not reckoned.
Next morning, after Serrano and Antonio had reported to the archduke, it
was decided, notwithstanding the very inhospitable treatment which they
had received, that those commissioners should return to their labours.
Ogle and Fairfax still remained as hostages in camp, and of course
professed entire ignorance of these extraordinary proceedings,
attributing them to some inexplicable misunderstanding. So on Monday,
24th, December, the quartermaster and the governor again repaired to
Ostend with orders to bring about the capitulation of the place as soon
as possible. The same sergeant-major was again appointed by Vere to
escort the strangers, and on asking by what way he should bring them in,
was informed by Sir Francis that it would never do to allow those
gentlemen, whose feet were accustomed to the soft sand of the sea-beach
and downs, to bruise themselves upon the hard paving-stones of Ostend,
but that the softest and muddiest road must be carefully selected for
them. These reasons accordingly were stated with perfect gravity to the
two Spaniards, who, in spite of their solemn remonstrances, were made to
repeat a portion of their experiences and to accept it as an act of
special courtesy from the English general. Thus so much time had been
spent in preliminaries and so much more upon the road that the short
winter's day was drawing to a close before they were again introduced to
the presence of Vere.
They found that fiery personage on this occasion all smiles and
blandishments. The Spaniards were received with most dignified courtesy,
to which they gravely responded; and the general then proceeded to make
excuses for the misunderstanding of the preceding day with its
uncomfortable consequences. Thereupon arose much animated discussion
as to the causes and the nature of the alarm on the east side which had
created such excitement. Much time was ingeniously consumed in this
utterly superfluous discussion; but at last the commissioners of the
archduke insisted on making allusion to the business which had brought
them to the town. "What terms of negotiation do you propose?" they
asked Sir Francis. "His Highness has only to withdraw from before
Ostend," coolly replied the general, "and leave us, his poor neighbours,
in peace and quietness. This would be the most satisfactory negotiation
possible and the one most easily made."
Serrano and Antonio found it difficult to see the matter in that cheerful
light, and assured Sir Francis that they had not been commissioned by the
archduke to treat for his own withdrawal but for the surrender of the
town. Hereupon high words and fierce discussion very naturally arose,
and at last, when a good deal of time had been spent in the sharp
encounter of wits, Vere proposed an adjournment of the discussion until
after supper; politely expressing the hope that the Spanish gentlemen
would be his guests.
The conversation had been from the beginning in French, as Vere, although
a master of the Spanish language, was desirous that the rest of the
company present should understand everything said at the interview.
The invitation to table was graciously accepted, and the Christmas eve
passed off more merrily than the preceding night had done, so far as
Vere's two guests were concerned. Several distinguished officers were
present at the festive board: Captain Montesquieu de Roquette, Sir Horace
Vere, Captains St. Hilaire, Meetkerke, De Ryck, and others among them.
As it was strict fast for the Catholics that evening--while on the other
hand the English, still reckoning according to the old style, would not
keep Christmas until ten days later--the banquet consisted mainly of eggs
and fish, and the like meagre articles, in compliment to the guests. It
was, however, as well furnished as could be expected in a beleaguered
town, out of whose harbour a winter gale had been for many weeks blowing
and preventing all ingress. There was at least no lack of excellent
Bordeaux wine; while the servants waiting upon the table did not fail to
observe that Governor Serrano was not in all respects a model of the
temperance usually characteristic of his race. They carefully counted
and afterwards related with admiration, not unmingled with horror, that
the veteran Spaniard drank fifty-two goblets of claret, and was emptying
his glass as fast as filled, although by no means neglecting the beer,
the quality of which he had tested the night before at the Half-moon.
Yet there seemed to be no perceptible effect produced upon him, save
perhaps that he grew a shade more grave and dignified with each
succeeding draught. For while the banquet proceeded in this very genial
manner business was by no means neglected; the negotiations for the
surrender of the city being conducted on both sides with a fuddled
solemnity very edifying for the attendants to contemplate.
Vere complained that the archduke was unreasonable, for he claimed
nothing less from his antagonists than their all. The commissioners
replied that all was no more than his own property. It certainly could
not be thought unjust of him to demand his own, and all Flanders was his
by legal donation from his Majesty of Spain. Vere replied that he had
never studied jurisprudence, and was not versed at all in that--science,
but he had always heard in England that possession was nine points of the
law. Now it so happened that they, and not his Highness, were in
possession of Ostend, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to make
a present of it to any one. The besiegers, he urged, had gained much
honour by their steady persistence amid so many dangers; difficulties,
and losses;--but winter had come, the weather was very bad, not a step of
progress had been made, and he was bold enough to express his opinion
that it would be far more sensible on the part of his Highness, after
such deeds of valour, to withdraw his diminished forces out of the
freezing and pestilential swamps before Ostend and go into comfortable
winter-quarters at Ghent or Bruges. Enough had been done for glory, and
it must certainly now be manifest that he had no chance of taking the
city.
Serrano retorted that it was no secret to the besiegers that the garrison
had dwindled to a handful; that it was quite impossible for them to
defend their outer works any longer; that with the loss of the external
boulevard the defence of the place would be impossible, and that, on the
contrary, it was for the republicans to resign themselves to their fate.
They, too, had done enough for glory, and had nothing for it but to
retire into the centre of their ruined little nest, where they must
burrow until the enemy should have leisure to entirely unearth them,
which would be a piece of work very easily and rapidly accomplished.
This was called negotiation; and thus the winter's evening wore away,
until the Spaniards; heavy with fatigue and wine, were without much
difficulty persuaded to seek the couches prepared for them.
Next day the concourse of people around the city was Christmas, wonderful
to behold. The rumour had spread through the, provinces, and was on the,
wing to all foreign countries, that Ostend had capitulated, and that the
commissioners were at that moment arranging the details. The cardinal-
archduke, in complete Milanese armour, with a splendid feather-bush
waving from his casque and surrounded by his brilliant body-guard,
galloped to and fro outside the entrenchments, expecting every moment a
deputation to come forth, bearing the keys of the town. The Infanta too,
magnificent in ruff and farthingale and brocaded petticoat, and attended
by a cavalcade of ladies of honour in gorgeous attire, pranced
impatiently about, awaiting the dramatic termination of a leaguer which
was becoming wearisome to besieger and besieged. Not even on the famous
second of July of the previous year, when that princess was pleasing
herself with imaginations as to the deportment of Maurice of Nassau as a
captive, had her soul been so full of anticipated triumph as on this
Christmas morning.
Such a festive scene as was now presented in the neighbourhood of Ostend
had not been exhibited for many a long year in Flanders. From the whole
country side came the peasants and burghers, men, women, and children, in
holiday attire. It was like a kermiss or provincial fair. Three
thousand people at least were roaming about in all direction, gaping with
wonder at the fortifications of the besieging army, so soon to be
superfluous, sliding, skating, waltzing on the ice, admiring jugglers,
dancing bears, puppet shows and merry-go-rounds, singing, and carousing
upon herrings, sausages, waffles, with mighty draughts of Flemish ale,
manifesting their exuberant joy that the thorn was nearly extracted from
the lion's paw, and awaiting with delight a blessed relief from that
operation. Never was a merrier Christmas morning in Flanders. There
should be an end now to the forays through the country of those red-
coated English pikemen, those hard-riding, hard-drinking troopers of
Germany and, Holland, with the French and Scotch arquebus men, and
terrible Zeeland sailors who had for years swept out of Ostend, at any
convenient opportunity, to harry the whole province. And great was the
joy in Flanders.
Meantime within the city a different scene was enacting. Those dignified
Spaniards--governor Serrano and Don Matteo Antonio--having slept off
their carouse, were prepared after breakfast next morning to resume the
interrupted negotiations. But affairs were now to take an unexpected
turn. In the night the wind had changed, and in the course of the
forenoon three Dutch vessels of war were descried in the offing, and soon
calmly sailed into the mouth of the Gullet. The news was at once brought
to Vere's headquarters. That general's plans had been crowned with
success even sooner than he expected. There was no further object in
continuing the comedy of negotiation, for the ships now arriving seemed
crowded with troops. Sir Francis accordingly threw off the mask, and
assuring his guests with extreme politeness that it had given him great
pleasure to make the acquaintance of such distinguished personages, he
thanked them cordially for their visit, but regretted that it would be no
longer in his power to entertain any propositions of a pacific nature.
The necessary reinforcements, which he had been so long expecting, had
at last reached him, and it would not yet be necessary for him to retire
into his ruined nest. Military honour therefore would not allow him to
detain them any longer. Should he ever be so hard pressed again he felt
sure that so magnanimous a prince as his Highness would extend to him all
due clemency and consideration.
The Spaniards; digesting as they best could the sauce of contumely with
which the gross treachery of the transaction was now seasoned, solemnly
withdrew, disdaining to express their spleen in words of idle menace.
They were escorted back through the lines, and at once made their report
at headquarters. The festival had been dismally interrupted before it
was well begun. The vessels were soon observed by friend and foe making
their way triumphantly up to the town where they soon dropped anchor at
the wharf of the inner Gullet, having only a couple of sailors wounded,
despite all the furious discharges of Bucquoy's batteries. The holiday
makers dispersed, much discomfited, the English hostages returned to the
town, and the archduke shut himself up, growling and furious. His
generals and counsellors, who had recommended the abandonment of his
carefully prepared assault, and acceptance of the perfidious propositions
to negotiate, by which so much golden time had been squandered, were for
several days excluded from his presence.
Meantime the army, disappointed, discontented, half-starved, unpaid,
passed their days and nights as before, in the sloppy trenches, while
deep and earnest were the complaints and the curses which succeeded to
the momentary exultation of Christmas eve. The soldiers were more than
ever embittered against their august commander-in-chief, for they had
just enjoyed a signal opportunity of comparing the luxury and comfortable
magnificence of his Highness and the Infanta, and of contrasting it with
their own misery. Moreover, it had long been exciting much indignation
in the ranks that veteran generals and colonels, in whom all men had
confidence, had been in great numbers superseded in order to make place
for court favourites, utterly without experience or talent. Thus the
veterans; murmuring in the wet trenches. The archduke meanwhile, in his
sullen retirement, brooded over a tragedy to follow the very successful
comedy of his antagonist.
It was not long delayed. The assault which had been postponed in the
latter days of December was to be renewed before the end of the first
week of the new year. Vere, through scouts and deserters, was aware of
the impending storm, and had made his arrangements in accordance with,
the very minute information which he had thus received. The
reinforcements, so opportunely sent by the States, were not numerous
--only six hundred in all--but they were an earnest of fresh comrades to
follow. Meantime they sufficed to fill the gaps in the ranks, and to
enable Vere to keep possession of the external line of fortifications,
including the all-important Porcupine. Moreover, during the fictitious
negotiations, while the general had thus been holding--as he expressed
it--the wolf by both ears, the labor of repairing damages in dyke, moat,
and wall had not been for an instant neglected.
The morning of the 7th January, 1602, opened with a vigorous cannonade
from all the archduke's batteries, east, west, and south. Auditor
Fleeting, counsellor and secretary of the city, aide-de-camp and right
hand of the commander-in-chief, a grim, grizzled, leathern-faced man of
fifty, steady under fire as a veteran arquebuseer, ready with his pen
as a counting-house clerk, and as fertile in resource as the most
experienced campaigner, was ever at the general's side. At his
suggestion several houses had been demolished, to furnish materials in
wood and iron to stop the gaps as soon as made. Especially about the
Sand Hill fort and the Porcupine a plentiful supply was collected, no
time having been lost in throwing up stockades, palisades, and every
other possible obstruction to the expected assailants. Knowing perfectly
well where the brunt of the battle was to be, Vere had placed his brother
Sir Horace at the head of twelve picked companies of diverse nations in
the Sand Hill. Four of the very best companies of the garrison were
stationed in the Porcupine, and ten more of the choicest in Fort Hell's
Mouth, under Colonel Meetkerke. It must be recollected that the first of
these three works was the key to the fortifications of the old or outer
town. The other two were very near it, and were the principal redoubts
which defended the most exposed and vulnerable portion of the new town on
the western side. The Sand Hill, as its name imported, was the only
existing relic within the city's verge of the chain of downs once
encircling the whole place. It had however been cannonaded so steadily
during the six months' siege as to have become almost ironclad--a mass of
metal gradually accumulating from the enemy's guns. With the curtain
extending from it towards east and west it protected the old town quite
up to the little ancient brick church, one of the only two in Ostend.
All day long the cannon thundered--a bombardment such as had never before
been dreamed of in those days, two thousand shots having been distinctly
counted, by the burghers. There was but languid response from the
besieged, who were reserving their strength. At last, to the brief
winter's day succeeded a pitch-dark evening. It was dead low tide at
seven. At that hour the drums suddenly beat alarm along the whole line
of fortifications from the Gullet on the east to the old harbour on the
west, while through the mirky atmosphere sounded the trumpets of the
assault, the shouts of the Spanish and Italian commanders, and the fierce
responsive yells of their troops. Sir Francis, having visited every
portion of the works, and satisfied himself that every man in the
garrison was under arms, and that all his arrangements had been
fulfilled, now sat on horseback, motionless as a statue, within the Sand
Hill. Among the many serious and fictitious attacks now making he waited
calmly for the one great assault, even allowing some of the enemy to
scale the distant counterscarp of the external works towards the south,
which he had by design left insufficiently guarded. It was but a brief
suspense, for in a few moments two thousand men had rushed through the
bed of the old harbour, out of which the tide had ebbed, and were
vigorously assailing the Sand Hill and the whole length of its curtain.
The impenetrable darkness made it impossible to count, but the noise and
the surging fury of the advance rendered it obvious that the critical
moment had arrived. Suddenly a vivid illumination burst forth. Great
pine torches, piles of tar-barrels, and heaps of other inflammable
material, which had been carefully arranged in Fort Porcupine, were now
all at once lighted by Vere's command.
As the lurid blaze flashed far and wide there started out of the gloom
not only the long lines of yellow jerkined pikemen and arquebuseers, with
their storm-hoods and scaling ladders, rushing swiftly towards the forts,
but beyond the broken sea dyke the reserved masses supporting the attack,
drawn up in solid clumps of spears, with their gay standards waving above
them, and with a strong force of cavalry in iron corslet and morion
stationed in the rear to urge on the infantry and prevent their faltering
in the night's work, became visible--phantom-like but perfectly distinct.
At least four thousand men were engaged in this chief attack, and the
light now permitted the besieged to direct their fire from cannon, demi-
cannon, culverin, and snaphance, with fatal effect. The assailants,
thinned, straggling, but undismayed, closed up their ranks, and still
came fiercely on. Never had Spaniards, Walloons, and Italians,
manifested greater contempt of death than on this occasion. They knew
that the archduke and the infanta were waiting breathlessly in Fort St.
Albert for the news of that victory of which the feigned negotiations had
defrauded them at Christmas, and they felt perfectly confident of ending
both the siege and the forty years' war this January night. But they had
reckoned without their wily English host. As they came nearer--van, and
at last reserve--they dropped in great heaps under the steady fire of the
musketry--as Philip Flaming, looking on, exclaimed--like apples when the
autumn wind blows through the orchard. And as the foremost still pressed
nearer and nearer, striving to clamber up the shattered counterscarp and
through every practicable breach, the English, Hollanders, and
Zeelanders, met them in the gap, not only at push of pike, but with their
long daggers and with flaming pitchhoops, and hurled them down to instant
death.
And thus around the Sand Hill, the Porcupine, and Hell's Mouth, the
battle raged nearly two hours long, without an inch of ground being
gained by the assailants. The dead and dying were piled beneath the
walls, while still the reserves, goaded up to the mark by the cavalry,
mounted upon the bodies of their fallen comrades and strove to plant
their, ladders. But now the tide was on the flood, the harbour was
filling, and cool Auditor Fleming, whom nothing escaped quietly asked
the general's permission to open the western' sluice. It was obvious,
he observed, that the fury of the attack was over, and that the enemy
would soon be effecting a retreat before the water should have risen too
high. He even pointed out many stragglers attempting to escape through
the already deepening shallows. Vere's consent was at once given, the
flood-gate was opened, and the assailants such as still survived--panic-
struck in a moment, rushed wildly back through the old harbour towards
their camp. It was too late. The waters were out, and the contending
currents whirled the fugitives up and down through the submerged land,
and beyond the broken dyke, until great numbers of them were miserably
drowned in the haven, while others were washed out to sea. Horses and
riders were borne off towards the Zealand coast, and several of their
corpses were picked up days afterwards in the neighbourhood of Flushing.