Part 9

It was fortunate for the northern provinces that Parma was not receiving reinforcements, or the whole country would soon have been overrun. Philippe was closely engaged in fomenting civil war in France and in planning the conquest of England, subjects which occupied his mind and drew upon his purse to such an extent that he neglected the Netherlands and failed to furnish money to maintain and pay even the limited number of soldiers he had there. He was the real head of the so-called holy league, that under the nominal leadership of the duke of Guise was in arms to establish absolutism and extirpate Protestantism in Europe. Parma was left mainly to his own resources, but he possessed military and diplomatic ability of the highest order, and could do with his slender army what ordinary generals could not have done with forces twice as strong.

If he could obtain possession of Brussels and Antwerp the backbone of the rebellion would be broken, he believed, and in the autumn of 1584 he commenced operations to that end. His plan was to construct a fortified bridge over the Schelde below Antwerp, which would prevent succour being sent up the river from Zeeland, and thus the cities would be starved out, for the open country was in his hands. There was one way by which this plan could be frustrated, and that was by cutting the great dykes and letting the sea roll over the land, but the patriots hesitated to destroy so much property. When at last they tried to do it they were too late, for Parma had fortified the dykes and held them with an iron hand. During the winter of 1584-5 famine was so severe in Brussels that people died of hunger, and on the 13th of March 1585 the city capitulated. Mechlin held out until the 19th of July, when it too fell.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The siege of Antwerp was one of the most celebrated events in the history of the Netherlands. The city was then much less populous than it had formerly been, but it still contained ninety thousand inhabitants, the most turbulent though the most energetic and industrious in Europe. It was the most important commercial city in the country. If there had been union of counsel and obedience to a single authority, Antwerp need not have feared anything that Parma with his eleven or twelve thousand soldiers could do, but all was discord and confusion within the walls. And without was one strong clear-headed man, with a genius for war, in command of soldiers devoted to him, a man who could construct a strong fortified bridge seven hundred and thirty-two metres in length over a deep tidal river in the winter season and in the face of a far superior number of combatants, a feat deemed by most people utterly impossible until it was accomplished. The sufferings of Antwerp were less than those of Leyden, but on the 17th of August 1585 the city capitulated. Life and property were to be respected, a ransom of only £33,000 was to be paid, no other than the Roman Catholic worship was to be publicly observed, but Protestants were allowed two years in which to dispose of their property and leave.

Immediately a stream of emigration set out towards the north. Amsterdam especially benefited by refugee merchants and artisans from Antwerp settling there, and very shortly became the first commercial city of Europe. Middelburg too and many other towns of Holland and Zeeland received a large access of population from the fugitive Protestants of Brabant and Flanders. The old cities immediately lost their former importance, Antwerp sank into a small place, the citadel was rebuilt and a foreign garrison was stationed in it, but beyond the soldiers and the members of the Company of Jesus who were stationed there as instructors of the young, no new residents were attracted to take the place of the Protestants who moved away.

[Sidenote: Treaty with Queen Elizabeth.]

During the siege of Antwerp the states-general were making every effort in their power to obtain assistance from England. Queen Elizabeth realised the necessity of supporting the Netherlands against Philippe II, who was her enemy as well as theirs, but she was unwilling to give more than was absolutely necessary. She had to be on her guard against other enemies than Spain, and she could not afford to spend money freely. The states offered her the sovereignty of the provinces, which she declined, and the negotiations for an alliance were so protracted that when an agreement was finally arrived at, it was too late to save Antwerp.

On the 10th of August 1585 a treaty between the queen and the states was signed, by the terms of which Elizabeth was to furnish and pay during the war five thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry to assist in the defence of the provinces,[25] and was to receive the town of Flushing and the fortress of Rammekens in Zeeland and the town of Brill and two fortresses in Holland as pledges for the payment of all expenses when the war was over. She was to provide these places with suitable garrisons, but was not to interfere in any way with the civil government or the customs and privileges of the inhabitants.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The earl of Leicester was appointed lieutenant-general of the English forces, and with a brilliant staff of nobles landed at Flushing on the 19th of December 1585. The chivalrous and virtuous Sir Philip Sidney was placed in command of the English garrison of Flushing.

The states-general, realising that under the existing form of government it was impossible to act with vigour against the enemy, appointed Leicester governor and captain-general of the united provinces, and on the 4th of February 1586 he was inaugurated at the Hague in that capacity. On the 6th a proclamation was issued by the states,[26] giving him “supreme command and absolute authority over all the affairs of war by sea and land, ... the administration and direction of government and justice over all the said united provinces, cities, and associated members, ... and special power to levy, receive, and administer all the contributions granted and appointed for carrying on the war.” The queen, however, was incensed by his acceptance of such extensive power, and he did not afterwards receive her support as freely as before. In particular the English soldiers in the Netherlands were left without pay or proper maintenance, and it might have gone hard with them if Parma’s forces had not been in the same condition. Philippe, who was hastening on the preparation of the great armada which he intended for the invasion and conquest of England, was trying to gain time and conceal his operations by pretending to enter into negotiations for peace, and so nothing decisive was done on either side.

What was effected during the year 1586 was more advantageous to the Spaniards than to the Dutch and English. In January of this year Parma laid siege to the town of Grave, on the Brabant bank of the Maas, and though in April the garrison was strengthened and a great quantity of provisions thrown in by the patriots, on the 7th of June the place was surrendered by its weak-minded commandant. On the same day Megen and Batenburg were given up to Parma, and on the 28th of June Venlo capitulated, when only the towns of Geertruidenberg, Heusden, Bergen op Zoom, and Willemstad were left in Brabant to the patriot cause. All the territory south of the lower Schelde had now been recovered by the Spaniards except a little slip in the north of Flanders and along the seacoast. This little slip was slightly enlarged, however, by the seizure on the 17th of July of the fortified town of Axel by a combined English and Dutch expedition.

[Sidenote: Death of Sir Philip Sidney.]

In Gelderland Nymegen on the Waal and Zutphen on the Yssel with some villages in the neighbourhood of each were held by the Spaniards, and Leicester resolved to attempt to get possession of them. On the 12th of September after a short siege he occupied Doesburg, eight kilometres from Zutphen, and then proceeded to beleaguer the city. Parma, with six thousand five hundred soldiers, immediately marched to its relief, and on the 2nd of October succeeded in forcing a way in with a great convoy of provisions. In the action when endeavouring to prevent him from doing so, the chivalrous Sir Philip Sidney received a wound from which he died. Parma, after strengthening the garrison, marched to disperse some German troops in the service of the States, and Leicester, having placed large garrisons in Deventer, Doesburg, and a very strong fort close to Zutphen, retired to the Hague. On the 24th of November he left the Netherlands to return to England, but did not resign his office, thus causing great confusion.

He had been at variance with the states-general, and had been disposed to carry out his views with a high hand, though he was exceedingly generous with his wealth and spent large sums of money of his own in the service of the country. Two parties had arisen: one, that may be termed oligarchal, favouring the existing form of town and provincial governments and wide toleration in matters of religion; the other, that called itself democratic, appealing to the sovereignty of the people at large, but without explaining how that sovereignty was to be manifested, and desiring to exclude rigidly all religious practices except those of the Reformed church. The earl of Leicester was the head of the last named of these parties. He left Sir John Norris in command of the English troops in the Netherlands, and professedly delegated his own authority to the state council, though secretly he issued commissions that greatly impaired the power of that body and of the English general.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Soon after his departure a series of deplorable events occurred. Sir William Stanley, who was in command of the garrison of Deventer, betrayed that important city to Colonel Tassis, who held Zutphen for Parma, and with an Irish regiment under his orders went over to the service of Spain. On the same day, 29th of January 1587, Colonel Rowland York betrayed to Tassis the great fortress close to Zutphen, of which he was in command. The northern provinces were thus cut in two, and the Spaniards were able to ravage large portions of Gelderland and Overyssel. Then Wauw, a castle about four kilometres from Bergen op Zoom, was sold to Parma by its commandant, and a little later the town of Gelder was similarly sold by Commandant Aristotle Patton.

These acts of treachery created a strong feeling of distrust of the whole of the English forces in the country, especially as it was known that Queen Elizabeth was extremely desirous of concluding peace with Spain, and was at this very time corresponding with the duke of Parma on the subject. The states-general took advantage of this feeling and attempted to recover the authority which they had ceded to the earl of Leicester, but did not fully succeed in doing so.

[Sidenote: Action of Sir Francis Drake.]

The preparations of Philippe for the invasion of England were rapidly advancing, and it had been arranged between him and Parma that a powerful army was to be massed in Flanders and Brabant, which should be embarked in small vessels and convoyed across the straits by a great fleet to be sent from Spain. Until all was ready, the queen was to be kept unsuspicious of danger by pretended negotiations for peace, which were never to be more than a blind.

To carry out this scheme Parma needed a capacious and convenient harbour. Those he possessed were useless for his purpose, because the English held Flushing at the mouth of the Schelde and Dutch armed ships were constantly cruising almost up to Antwerp, so at the beginning of June 1587 he laid siege to Sluis in north-western Flanders with all the forces he could muster. The town had a garrison of eight hundred English and eight hundred Dutch soldiers, and not only the burghers but the women aided heroically in its defence. The importance of preventing such a harbour from falling into the hands of the Spaniards was realised at once in England, and Leicester was directed to return to the Netherlands without delay. On the 7th of July he reached Flushing with three thousand raw recruits, but the bickering between him and the states was so great that united action was impossible, and his attempt to relieve Sluis was an utter failure. The garrison was so reduced in number that it could resist no longer, and the burghers and women were quite worn out, when at the beginning of August Sluis capitulated on honourable terms, and Parma came into possession of an excellent base for the invasion of England.

That invasion, however, was deferred for a time, and the pretence of negotiating for peace was to be continued many months longer, owing to the action of the daring sea captain Sir Francis Drake. Drake sailed from Plymouth on the 2nd of April 1587 with four men-of-war and twenty-four ships fitted out by private adventurers, and seventeen days later entered the harbour of Cadiz and pillaged, burned, and destroyed some hundred and fifty vessels that he found there. He then sailed to Lisbon, and destroyed a hundred transports and provision ships that were lying in the Tagus. At first sight this looks something like piracy, for there had been no declaration of war between England and Spain. But what were all those vessels lying off Cadiz and Lisbon destined for? For the invasion of England, and this it was that justified Drake in destroying them as he so bravely did.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Leicester remained nearly six months in the Netherlands on his second visit, and then, finding it impossible to recover his former authority, he returned to England. On the 27th of December 1587 he attached his name to a document resigning his office, but it did not reach the states-general until April 1588. In the interim a condition of affairs that can almost be termed civil war prevailed. The officials and commanders of garrisons who had taken an oath of fidelity to Leicester refused to obey any other authority, and young Maurits of Nassau, who had been appointed by the states captain-general, was obliged to coerce them by force of arms. At last Leicester’s resignation was received, and on the 12th of April 1588 the states-general issued a placaat[27] absolving all persons from their oaths of fidelity to him, when something like harmony was restored. The baron Willoughby now became the commander of the English troops in the Netherlands.

Warlike operations in that country were, however, almost stayed for a while, owing to Parma’s whole attention being occupied with preparations for the invasion of England and deceiving the English commissioners who were treating for peace. He was building great numbers of small transports, collecting vast stores of provisions and munitions of war, and providing for sixty thousand soldiers, some of whom were intended to hold his conquests during his absence and others to go with him to England when the invincible armada should arrive from Spain with additional forces and convoy his vessels across the channel.

[Sidenote: The Invincible Armada.]

At last in July 1588 the armada, consisting of a hundred and thirty-four ships of war, with twenty thousand soldiers on board, sailed from Coruña, and on the 29th of that month came in sight of the English coast. Never in the world’s history were more important issues in the balance than those dependent on that mighty fleet. Absolutism or political liberty, iron bound religious conformity or freedom of conscience, these were the issues at stake, not only for England and Holland, but for mighty nations still unborn. It is not necessary to relate the history of the armada here, every schoolboy knows how it came to anchor in Calais roads, how the Sea Beggars of Holland and Zeeland prevented Parma from joining it, how the English fleet under Howard and Drake and Hawkins and other ocean heroes followed and worried it, how they sent fireships that frightened it in confusion from Calais roads, how it fled into the North sea with the English grappling every galleon that lagged behind, how God sent a great storm that dispersed it, and how finally only fifty-three out of the hundred and thirty-four huge fighting ships reached the Spanish coast again, and these little better than disabled wrecks. The invincible armada was no more, and England and Holland were saved.

Parma had a great army under his command, but sickness was wasting it away, and he had not the means of maintaining it properly. So much had been expended upon the armada that it was impossible for Philippe to send him the money he needed. He was in chronic ill-health and seemed to have lost heart too by the failure of the mighty effort that had been made, and so for a time took no action commensurate with what might have been expected of him. He indeed laid siege to Bergen op Zoom, which was garrisoned by five thousand Dutch and English soldiers under Colonel Morgan, but he did not press it with his old vigour, and during the night of the 12th of November 1588 he abandoned it. Then for months he did nothing, until on the 10th of April 1589 he obtained possession of Geertruidenberg, a town on the Brabant side of the Maas.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Philippe’s views were now directed more to France than to the Netherlands. After the assassination of Henry III the two parties in that kingdom appealed to arms, and Parma was directed to assist the duke of Mayenne, who was at the head of the Catholic league, against Henry of Navarre, then a Huguenot, the legitimate heir to the throne. Accordingly, in March 1590 he began to send troops to Mayenne, and in August he followed in person with twelve thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry, but after breaking the blockade of Paris, then besieged by Navarre, he returned to the Netherlands, leaving a strong division of his forces in France. His soldiers were dying rapidly from disease, they were unpaid and half mutinous, and neither money nor sufficient provisions could be obtained in the exhausted Spanish provinces. Under these circumstances Parma, notwithstanding the large number of men nominally at his disposal, was really almost helpless.

Maurits was not slow to take advantage of this condition of things. He had a regular army of only ten thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, but his troops were properly paid and well disciplined, and he was rapidly advancing in military knowledge and skill. He had also the assistance of a small English contingent. On the 4th of March 1590 he got possession of the important town of Breda in Brabant. During the night of the 3rd seventy Hollanders concealed in a turf boat gained entrance to the castle, and attacked the garrison of Italian soldiers six times their number, who were seized with a panic and fled into the town. Before dawn of the 4th a body of patriot troops, with Maurits at their head, arrived, and Breda was gained. Within a few months eight other towns in Brabant, though all of less importance than Breda, were wrested from the Spaniards.

[Sidenote: Death of the Duke of Parma.]

During 1591 some great successes were gained by Maurits. On the 23rd of May the great fort at Zutphen was taken, and on the 30th the town capitulated. On the 10th of June Deventer was surrendered, and thus the important cities lost by the treachery of Stanley and York were recovered. On the 2nd of July Delfzyl, far north in Groningen, capitulated, and on the 24th of September Hulst, in the north of Flanders, was obliged to do the same. On the 21st of October Nymegen was taken, so that the year was a most fortunate one for the patriot cause. The Spanish garrisons of all these towns had made a stout resistance, and some had held out for a long time, but none of those scenes of massacre that characterised Spanish victories obscured the successes of Maurits. The soldiers were permitted to march away unharmed, and the result was that afterwards they did not fight so desperately as they would have done if they had believed that to submit would be followed by their butchery. As to religion, the same system was introduced in the recovered towns as was observed in South Africa during the greater part of the rule of the East India Company: only the Reformed worship could be practised publicly, but there was no inquisition in matters of conscience, and in their own houses men could worship as they pleased.

During 1592 less was accomplished. From January to June Parma was in France, and when he left that country his ill health prevented him from making much exertion. Philippe, without the slightest cause, had become suspicious of his fidelity, and had resolved to disgrace him. From this indignity he was spared by his death at Arras on the 3rd of December 1592. The old count Pieter Ernest Mansfeld then acted as governor-general of the submissive Netherlands until January 1594, when the archduke Ernest, brother of the emperor of Germany and nephew of King Philippe, arrived at Brussels and assumed the duty. He was a man of no account, and played a very unimportant part until his death on the 20th of February 1595. The count of Fuentes then acted as head of affairs until the 29th of January 1596, when the cardinal archduke Albert, youngest brother of the late Ernest, took over the charge.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

At this time the war against Spain was chiefly confined to France, where both the English and the Dutch were aiding the king of Navarre against Philippe and the Catholic league. In July 1593 the king of Navarre was reconciled to the Catholic church, and on the 26th of February 1594 was crowned at Chartres as Henry IV, king of France. Still the English and Dutch continued to help him against Spain, and the Spanish forces, except the garrisons of the towns, were withdrawn from the Netherlands to oppose him, so that Maurits was able with his little army and a few English auxiliaries to do something. He laid siege to Steenwyk, in the north of Overyssel, which surrendered on the 4th of July 1592, and to Koevorden, in Drenthe, which capitulated on the 12th of September of the same year. Next he laid siege to Geertruidenberg, which capitulated on the 22nd of June 1593, and to Groningen, which fell into his hands on the 22nd of July 1594. The remainder of the district, then termed the Ommelanden, was already a party to the union of Utrecht, and the city now at once gave in its adhesion, so that the province of Groningen thereafter took rank as a sister state of Holland and the others.

In 1595 nothing of much note occurred, and in 1596 the most important military event was the recovery of Hulst by the archduke on the 18th of August. But in this year an act of the king of Spain had very serious consequences for the Netherlands. This was the repudiation by Philippe of the public debt of his empire, which at this time was actually so great that nearly the whole of his revenue was needed to pay the interest alone. So reckless was the expenditure of the lord of Spain, Portugal, Italy, the obedient Netherlands, America, and India! Twice before, in 1557 and 1575, he had suspended payment to the national creditors, and now, on the 20th of November 1596, he freed himself of the whole burden by simply disowning it. The ruin of his creditors was not more complete than the ruin of his credit thereafter. The obedient provinces were so exhausted that the cardinal archduke could not raise sufficient revenue from them to meet the cost of administration, much less maintain the army, and the soldiers at once lost all heart.

[Sidenote: Successes of Prince Maurits.]