Part 737

"After the fall of Ghent, Farnese applied himself earnestly to the siege of Antwerp, one of the most memorable recorded in history. The citizens were animated in their defence by the valour and talent of Ste Aldegonde. It would be impossible to detail with minuteness in this general history the various contrivances resorted to on either side for the attack and the defence; and we must therefore content ourselves with briefly adverting to that stupendous monument of Farnese's military genius, the bridge which he carried across the Scheldt, below Antwerp, in order to cut off the communication of the city with the sea and the maritime provinces. From the depth and wideness of the river, the difficulty of finding the requisite materials, and of transporting them to the place selected in the face of an enemy that was superior on the water, the project was loudly denounced by Farnese's officers as visionary and impracticable; yet in spite of all these discouragements and difficulties, as the place seemed unapproachable in the usual way, he steadily persevered, and at last succeeded in an undertaking which, had he failed, would have covered him with perpetual ridicule. The spot fixed upon for the bridge was between Ordam and Kalloo, where the river is both shallower and narrower than at other parts. The bridge consisted of piles driven into the water to such distance as its depth would allow; which was 200 feet on the Flanders side and 900 feet on that of Brabant. The interval between the piles, which was 12 feet broad, was covered with planking; but at the extremities towards the centre of the river the breadth was extended to 40 feet, thus forming two forts, or platforms, mounted with cannon. There was still, however, an interstice in the middle of between 1,000 and 1,100 feet, through which the ships of the enemy, favoured by the wind and tide, or by the night, could manage to pass without any considerable loss, and which it therefore became necessary to fill up. This was accomplished by mooring across it the hulls of 32 vessels, at intervals of about 20 feet apart, and connecting them together with planks. Each vessel was planted with artillery and garrisoned by about 30 men; while the bridge was protected by a flota of vessels moored on each side, above and below, at a distance of about 200 feet. During the construction of the bridge, which lasted half a year, the citizens of Antwerp viewed with dismay the progress of a work that was not only to deprive them of their maritime commerce, but also of the supplies necessary for their subsistence and defence. At length they adopted a plan suggested by Gianbelli, an Italian engineer, and resolved to destroy the bridge by means of fire-ships, which seem to have been first used on this occasion. Several such vessels were sent down the river with a favourable tide and wind, of which two were charged with 6,000 or 7,000 lbs. of gunpowder each, packed in solid masonry, with various destructive missiles. One of these vessels went ashore before reaching its destination; the other arrived at the bridge and exploded with terrible effect. Curiosity to behold so novel a spectacle had attracted vast numbers of the Spaniards, who lined the shores as well as the bridge. Of these 800 were killed by the explosion, and by the implements of destruction discharged with the powder; a still greater number were maimed and wounded, and the bridge itself was considerably damaged. Farnese himself was thrown to the earth and lay for a time insensible. The besieged, however, did not follow up their plan with vigour. They allowed Farnese time to repair the damage, and the Spaniards, being now on the alert, either diverted the course of the fire-ships that were subsequently sent against them, or suffered them to pass the bridge through openings made for the purpose. In spite of the bridge, however, the beleaguered citizens might still have secured a transit down the river by breaking through the dykes between Antwerp and Lillo, and sailing over the plains thus laid under water, for which purpose it was necessary to obtain possession of the counter-dyke of Kowenstyn; but after a partial success, too quickly abandoned by Hohenlohe and Ste Aldegonde, they were defeated in a bloody battle which they fought upon the dyke. Antwerp was now obliged to capitulate; and as Farnese was anxious to put an end to so long a siege, it obtained more favourable terms than could have been anticipated (August 17th 1585). The prosperity of this great commercial city received, however, a severe blow from its capture by the Spaniards. A great number of the citizens, as well as of the inhabitants of Brabant and Flanders, removed to Amsterdam and Middelburg."

_T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe, book 3, chapter 9 (volume 2)._

The downfall of the prosperity of the great capital "was instantaneous. The merchants and industrious citizens all wandered away from the place which had been the seat of a world-wide traffic. Civilization and commerce departed, and in their stead were the citadel and the Jesuits."

_J. L. Motley, History of the United Netherlands, chapter 5 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN: _F. Schiller, Siege of Antwerp._

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1585-1586. Proffered sovereignty of the United Provinces declined by France and England. Delusive English succors. The queen's treachery and Leicester's incompetency. Useless battle at Zutphen.

"It was natural that so small a State, wasted by its protracted struggles, should desire, more earnestly than ever, an alliance with some stronger power; and it was from among States supposed to have sympathies with Protestants, that such an alliance was sought. From the Protestant countries of Germany there was no promise of help; and the eyes of the Dutch diplomatists were therefore turned towards France and England. In France, the Huguenots, having recovered from St. Bartholomew, now enjoyed toleration; and were a rising and hopeful party, under the patronage of Henry of Navarre. {2273} If the king of France would protect Holland from Philip, and extend to its people the same toleration which he allowed his own subjects, Holland offered him the sovereignty of the united provinces. This tempting offer was declined: for a new policy was now to be declared, which united France and Spain in a bigoted crusade against the Protestant faith. The League, under the Duke de Guise, gained a fatal ascendency over the weak and frivolous king, Henry III., and held dominion in France. … Nor was the baneful influence of the League confined to France: it formed a close alliance with Philip and the Pope, with whom it was plotting the overthrow of Protestant England, the subjection of the revolted provinces of Spain, and the general extirpation of heresy throughout Europe. … The only hope of the Netherlands was now in England, which was threatened by a common danger; and envoys were sent to Elizabeth with offers of the sovereignty, which had been declined by France. So little did the Dutch statesmen as yet contemplate a republic, that they offered their country to any sovereign, in return for protection. Had bolder counsels prevailed, Elizabeth might, at once, have saved the Netherlands, and placed herself at the head of the Protestants of Europe. She saw her own danger, if Philip should recover the provinces: but she held her purse-strings with the grasp of a miser: she dreaded an open rupture with Spain; and she was unwilling to provoke her own Catholic subjects. Sympathy with the Protestant cause, she had none. … She desired to afford as much assistance as would protect her own realm against Philip, at the least possible cost, without precipitating a war with Spain. She agreed to send men and money: but required Flushing, Brill, and Rammekens to be held as a security for her loans. She refused the sovereignty of the States: but she despatched troops to the Netherlands, and sent her favourite, the Earl of Leicester, to command them. As she had taken the rebellious subjects of Spain under her protection, Philip retaliated by the seizure of British ships. Spanish vengeance was not averted, while the Netherlands profited little by her aid."

_Sir T. E. May, Democracy in Europe, chapter 11 (volume 2)._

Leicester sailed for the Hague in the middle of December, 1585, having been preceded by 8,000 English troops, eager to prevent or revenge the fall of Antwerp. "Had there been good faith and resolution, and had Lord Grey, or Sir Richard Bingham, or Sir John Norris been in command, 20,000 Dutch and English troops might have taken the field in perfect condition. The States would have spent their last dollar to find them in everything which soldiers could need. They would have had at their backs the enthusiastic sympathy of the population, while the enemy was as universally abhorred; and Parma, exhausted by his efforts in the great siege, with his chest empty, and his ranks thinned almost to extinction, could not have encountered them with a third of their numbers. A lost battle would have been followed by a renewed revolt of the reconciled Provinces, and Elizabeth, if she found peace so necessary to her, might have dictated her own conditions." But months passed and nothing was done, while Queen Elizabeth was treacherously negotiating with agents of Spain. In the summer of 1586, "half and more than half of the brave men who had come over in the past September were dead. Their places were taken by new levies gathered in haste upon the highways, or by mutinous regiments of Irish kernes, confessed Catholics, and led by a man [Sir William Stanley] who was only watching an opportunity to betray his sovereign. … Gone was now the enthusiasm which had welcomed the landing of Leicester. In the place of it was suspicion and misgiving, distracted councils, and divided purposes. Elizabeth while she was diplomatising held her army idle. Parma, short-handed as he was, treated with his hand upon his sword, and was for ever carving slice on slice from the receding frontiers of the States. At the time of Leicester's installation he was acting on the Meuse. He held the river as far as Venloo. Venloo and Grave were in the hands of the patriots, both of them strong fortresses, the latter especially. … After the fall of Antwerp these two towns were Parma's next object. The siege of Grave was formed in January. In April Colonel Norris and Count Hohenlohe forced the Spanish lines and threw in supplies; but Elizabeth's orders prevented further effort. Parma came before the town in person in June, and after a bombardment which produced little or no effect, Grave, to the surprise of everyone, surrendered. Count Hemart, the governor, was said to have been corrupted, by his mistress. Leicester hanged him; but Hemart's gallows did not recover Grave or save Venloo, which surrendered also three weeks later. The Earl, conscious of the disgrace, yet seeing no way to mend it, … was willing at last to play into his mistress's hands. He understood her [Queen Elizabeth] at last, and saw what she was aiming at. 'As the cause is now followed,' he wrote to her on the 27th of June, 'it is not worth the cost or the danger. … They [the Netherlanders] would rather have lived with bread and drink under your Majesty's protection than with all their possessions under the King of Spain. It has almost broken their hearts to think your Majesty should not care any more for them. But if you mean soon to leave them they will be gone almost before you hear of it. I will do my best, therefore, to get into my hands three or four most principal places in North Holland, so as you shall rule these men, and make war and peace as you list. Part not with Brill for anything. With these places you can have what peace you will in an hour, and have your debts and charges readily answered. But your Majesty must deal graciously with them at present, and if you mean to leave them keep it to yourself.' … No palliation can be suggested, of the intentions to which Leicester saw that she was still clinging, and which he was willing to further in spite of his oath to be loyal to the States. … The incapacity of Leicester … was growing evident. He had been used as a lay figure to dazzle the eyes of the Provinces, while both he and they were mocked by the secret treaty. The treaty was hanging fire. … The Queen had … so far opened her eyes as to see that she was not improving her position by keeping her army idle; and Leicester, that he might not part with his government in entire disgrace, having done absolutely nothing, took the field for a short campaign in the middle of August [1586]. {2274} Parma had established himself in Gelderland, at Zutphen, and Duesberg. The States held Deventer, further down the Issel; but Deventer would probably fall as Grave and Venloo had fallen if the Spaniards kept their hold upon the river; Leicester therefore proposed to attempt to recover Zutphen. Everyone was delighted to be moving. … The Earl of Essex, Sir William Russell, Lord Willoughby, and others who held no special commands, attached themselves to Leicester's staff; Sir Philip Sidney obtained leave of absence from Flushing; Sir John Norris and his brother brought the English contingent of the States army; Sir William Stanley had arrived with his Irishmen; and with these cavaliers glittering about him, and 9,000 men, Leicester entered Gelderland. Duesberg surrendered to him without a blow; Norris surprised a fort outside Zutphen, which commanded the river and straitened the communications of the town." Parma made an attempt, on the morning of September 22, to throw supplies into the town, and Leicester's knights and gentlemen, forewarned of this project by a spy, "Volunteered for an ambuscade to cut off the convoy. … Parma brought with him every man that he could spare, and the ambuscade party were preparing unconsciously to encounter 4,000 of the best troops in the world. They were in all about 500. … The morning was misty. The waggons were heard coming, but nothing could be seen till a party of horse appeared at the head of the train where the ambuscade was lying. Down charged the 500, much as in these late years 600 English lancers charged elsewhere, as magnificently and as uselessly. … Never had been a more brilliant action seen or heard of, never one more absurd and profitless. For the ranks of the Spanish infantry were unbroken, the English could not touch them, could not even approach them, and behind the line of their muskets the waggons passed steadily to the town. … A few, not many, had been killed; but among those whose lives had been flung away so wildly was Philip Sidney. He was struck by a musket ball on his exposed thigh, as he was returning from his last charge," and died a few weeks later. "Parma immediately afterwards entered Zutphen unmolested. … Leicester's presence was found necessary in England. With the natural sympathy of one worthless person for another, he had taken a fancy to Stanley, and chose to give him an independent command; and leaving the government to the Council of the States, and the army again without a chief, he sailed in November for London."

_J. A. Froude, History of England: The Reign of Elizabeth, chapter 33 (volume 6)._

ALSO IN: _Correspondence of Leicester during his Government of the Low Countries (Camden Society 27)._

_W. Gray, Life and Times of Sir Philip Sidney, chapter 10._

_C. R. Markham, The Fighting Veres, chapters 7-8._

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1587-1588. The ruin of the Spanish Provinces. Great prosperity of the United Provinces. Siege and capture of Sluys. The last of Leicester.

"Though the United Provinces were distracted by domestic dissensions and enfeebled by mutual distrust, their condition, compared with that portion of the Netherlands reduced under the yoke of Spain, was such as to afford matter of deep gratulation and thankfulness. The miseries of war had visited the latter unhappy country in the fullest measure; multitudes of its inhabitants had fled in despair; and the sword, famine, and pestilence, vied with each other in destroying the remainder. … The rich and smiling pastures, once the admiration and envy of the less favoured countries of Europe, were now no more; woods, roads, and fields, were confounded in one tangled mass of copse and brier. In the formerly busy and wealthy towns of Flanders and Brabant, Ghent, Antwerp, and Bruges, members of noble families were seen to creep from their wretched abodes in the darkness of night to beg their bread, or to search the streets for bones and offal. A striking and cheering contrast is the picture presented by the United Provinces. The crops had, indeed, failed there also, but the entire command of the sea which they preserved, and the free importation of corn, secured plentiful supplies. … They continued to carry on, under Spanish colours, a lucrative half-smuggling traffic, which the government of that nation found it its interest to connive at and encourage. The war, therefore, instead of being, as usual, an hindrance to commerce, rather gave it a new stimulus; the ports were crowded with vessels. … Holland and Zealand had now for more than ten years been delivered from the enemy. … The security they thus offered, combined with the freedom of religion, and the activity of trade and commerce, drew vast multitudes to their shores; the merchants and artisans expelled, on account of their religion, from the Spanish Netherlands, transferred thither the advantages of their enterprise and skill. … The population of the towns became so overflowing that it was found impossible to build houses fast enough to contain it. … The miserable condition of the Spanish Netherlands, and the difficulty of finding supplies for his troops, caused the Duke of Parma to delay taking the field until late in the summer [1587]; when, making a feint attack upon Ostend, he afterwards … commenced a vigorous siege of Sluys. In order to draw him off from this undertaking, Maurice, with the Count of Hohenlohe, marched towards Bois-le-Duc. … The danger of Sluys hastened the return of the Earl of Leicester to the Netherlands, who arrived in Ostend with 7,000 foot and 500 horse. … Sluys had been besieged seven weeks, and the garrison was reduced from 1,600 men to scarcely half that number, when Leicester made an attempt to master the fort of Blankenburg, in the neighbourhood of the enemy's camp; but on intelligence that Parma was approaching to give him battle, he hastily retreated to Ostend," and Sluys was surrendered. "The loss of Sluys exasperated the dissensions between Leicester and the States into undisguised and irreconcilable hostility." He was soon afterwards recalled to England, and early in the following year the queen required him to resign his command and governorship in the Netherlands. In the meantime, the English queen had reopened negotiations with Parma, who occupied her attention while his master, Philip II. of Spain, was preparing the formidable Armada which he launched against England the next year

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1588.

_C. M. Davies, History of Holland, part 3, chapters 2-3 (volume 2)._

{2275}

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1588-1593. Successes of Prince Maurice. Departure of Parma to France. His death. Appointment of Archduke Albert to the Government.

"The destruction of the great Spanish Armada by the English in 1588 infused new hopes into all the enemies of Spain, and animated the Dutch with such courage, that Maurice led his army against that of the Duke of Parma, and forced him to raise the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, at that time garrisoned by a portion of Leicester's army under the command of Sir Francis Vere. … The young Stadtholder was induced by this success to surprise the Castle of Blyenbeck, which was yielded to his arms in 1589; and the following year [March 1] he got possession of Breda by a 'ruse de guerre,'"—having introduced 70 men into the town by concealing them in a boat laden with turf. "The Duke of Parma was now recalled from the Low Countries into France [see FRANCE: A. D. 1590], and the old Peter Ernest, Count de Mansfeld, succeeded to the government of the Low Countries. … Maurice defeated the Spanish army in the open field at Caervorden, and took Nimeguen [October 21, 1591] and Zutphen [May 30, 1591; also, Deventer, June 10, of the same year]. … These successes added greatly to the reputation of Count Maurice, who now made considerable progress, so that in the year 1591 the Dutch saw their frontiers extended, and had well-grounded hopes of driving the Spaniards out of Friesland in another campaign. … The death of the Prince of Parma [which occurred December 3, 1592] delivered the Confederates from a formidable adversary; but old Count Mansfeld, at the head of an army of 30,000 men, took the field against them. Maurice, however, in 1593, notwithstanding this covering force, sat down before Gertruydenberg, advantageously situated on the frontier of Brabant." The siege was regarded as a masterpiece of the military art of the day, and the city was brought to surrender at the end of three months. "With the useful aid of Sir Francis Vere and the English, Maurice afterwards took Gronenburg and Grave, which formed part of his own patrimony. The Duke of Parma was succeeded in the government of the Netherlands by the Archduke Albert, a younger son of the Emperor Maximilian, who was married to Isabella, daughter of King Philip."

_Sir E. Cust, Lives of the Warriors of the Thirty Years' War: Maurice of Orange-Nassau, pages 25-28._

ALSO IN: _C. R. Markham, The Fighting Veres, part 1, chapters 10-15._

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1594-1597. Spanish operations in Northern France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1593-1598.

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1594-1609. Steady decline of Spanish power. Sovereignty of the provinces made over to the Infanta Isabella and the Archduke, her husband. Death of Philip II. Negotiations for peace. A twelve years' truce agreed upon. Acknowledgment of the independence of the republic.

"Philip's French enterprise had failed. The dashing and unscrupulous Henry of Navarre had won his crown, by conforming to the Catholic faith. …

See FRANCE: A. D. 1591-1593.