Books: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1572 73
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John Lothrop Motley >> The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1572 73
After the army which the Prince had so unsuccessfully led to the relief
of Mons had been disbanded, he had himself repaired to Holland. He had
come to Kampen shortly before its defection from his cause. Thence he
had been escorted across the Zuyder Zee to Eukhuyzen. He came to that
province, the only one which through good and ill report remained
entirely faithful to him, not as a conqueror but as an unsuccessful,
proscribed man. But there were warm hearts beating within those cold
lagunes, and no conqueror returning from a brilliant series of victories
could have been received with more affectionate respect than William in
that darkest hour of the country's history. He had but seventy horsemen
at his back, all which remained of the twenty thousand troops which he
had a second time levied in Germany, and he felt that it would be at that
period hopeless for him to attempt the formation of a third army. He had
now come thither to share the fate of Holland, at least, if he could not
accomplish her liberation. He went from city to city, advising with the
magistracies and with the inhabitants, and arranging many matters
pertaining both to peace and war. At Harlem the States of the Provinces,
according to his request, had been assembled. The assembly begged him
to lay before them, if it were possible, any schemes and means which he
might have devised for further resistance to the Duke of Alva. Thus
solicited, the Prince, in a very secret session, unfolded his plans, and
satisfied them as to the future prospects of the cause. His speech has
nowhere been preserved. His strict injunctions as to secrecy, doubtless,
prevented or effaced any record of the session. It is probable, however,
that he entered more fully into the state of his negotiations with
England, and into the possibility of a resumption by Count Louis of his
private intercourse with the French court, than it was safe, publicly, to
divulge.
While the Prince had been thus occupied in preparing the stout-hearted
province for the last death-struggle with its foe, that mortal combat
was already fast approaching; for the aspect of the contest in the
Netherlands was not that of ordinary warfare. It was an encounter
between two principles, in their nature so hostile to each other that the
absolute destruction of one was the only, possible issue. As the fight
went on, each individual combatant seemed inspired by direct personal
malignity, and men found a pleasure in deeds of cruelty, from which
generations not educated to slaughter recoil with horror. To murder
defenceless prisoners; to drink, not metaphorically but literally, the
heart's blood of an enemy; to exercise a devilish ingenuity in inventions
of mutual torture, became not only a duty but a rapture. The Liberty of
the Netherlands had now been hunted to its lair. It had taken its last
refuge among the sands and thickets where its savage infancy had been
nurtured, and had now prepared itself to crush its tormentor in a last
embrace, or to die in the struggle.
After the conclusion of the sack and massacre of Naarden, Don Frederic
had hastened to Amsterdam, where the Duke was then quartered, that he
might receive the paternal benediction for his well-accomplished work.
The royal approbation was soon afterwards added to the applause of his
parent, and the Duke was warmly congratulated in a letter written by
Philip as soon as the murderous deed was known, that Don Frederic had so
plainly shown himself to be his father's son. There was now more work
for father and son. Amsterdam was the only point in Holland which held
for Alva, and from that point it was determined to recover the whole
province. The Prince of Orange was established in the southern district;
Diedrich Sonoy, his lieutenant, was stationed in North Holland. The
important city of Harlem lay between the two, at a spot where the whole
breadth of the territory, from sea to sea, was less than an hour's walk.
With the fall of that city the province would be cut in twain, the
rebellious forces utterly dissevered, and all further resistance,
it was thought, rendered impossible.
The inhabitants of Harlem felt their danger. Bossu, Alva's stadholder
for Holland, had formally announced the system hitherto pursued at
Mechlin, Zutphen, and Naarden, as the deliberate policy of the
government. The King's representative had formally proclaimed the
extermination of man, woman; and child in every city which opposed his
authority, but the promulgation and practice of such a system had an
opposite effect to the one intended. The hearts of the Hollanders were
rather steeled to resistance than awed into submission by the fate of
Naarden." A fortunate event, too, was accepted as a lucky omen for the
coming contest. A little fleet of armed vessels, belonging to Holland,
had been frozen up in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam. Don Frederic on
his arrival from Naarden, despatched a body of picked men over the ice to
attack the imprisoned vessels. The crews had, however, fortified
themselves by digging a wide trench around the whole fleet, which thus
became from the moment an almost impregnable fortress. Out of this
frozen citadel a strong band of well-armed and skilful musketeers sallied
forth upon skates as the besieging force advanced. A rapid, brilliant,
and slippery skirmish succeeded, in which the Hollanders, so accustomed
to such sports, easily vanquished their antagonists, and drove them off
the field, with the loss of several hundred left dead upon the ice.
"'T was a thing never heard of before to-day," said Alva, "to see a body
of arquebusiers thus skirmishing upon a frozen sea." In the course of
the next four-and-twenty hours a flood and a rapid thaw released the
vessels, which all escaped to Enkhuyzen, while a frost, immediately and
strangely succeeding, made pursuit impossible.
The Spaniards were astonished at these novel manoeuvres upon the ice.
It is amusing to read their elaborate descriptions of the wonderful
appendages which had enabled the Hollanders to glide so glibly into
battle with a superior force, and so rapidly to glance away, after
achieving a signal triumph. Nevertheless, the Spaniards could never be
dismayed, and were always apt scholars, even if an enemy were the
teacher. Alva immediately ordered seven thousand pairs of skates, and
his soldiers soon learned to perform military evolutions with these new
accoutrements as audaciously, if not as adroitly, as the Hollanders.
A portion of the Harlem magistracy, notwithstanding the spirit which
pervaded the province, began to tremble as danger approached. They were
base enough to enter into secret negotiations with Alva, and to send
three of their own number to treat with the Duke at Amsterdam. One was
wise enough to remain with the enemy. The other two were arrested on
their return, and condemned, after an impartial trial, to death. For,
while these emissaries of a cowardly magistracy were absent, the stout
commandant of the little garrison, Ripperda, had assembled the citizens
and soldiers in the market-place. He warned them of the absolute
necessity to make a last effort for freedom. In startling colors he held
up to them the fate of Mechlin, of Zutphen, of Naarden, as a prophetic
mirror, in which they might read their own fate should they be base
enough to surrender the city. There was no composition possible, he
urged, with foes who were as false as they were sanguinary, and whose
foul passions were stimulated, not slaked, by the horrors with which they
had already feasted themselves.
Ripperda addressed men who could sympathize with his bold and lofty
sentiments. Soldiers and citizens cried out for defence instead of
surrender, as with one voice, for there were no abject spirits at Harlem,
save among the magistracy; and Saint Aldegonde, the faithful minister of
Orange, was soon sent to Harlem by the Prince to make a thorough change
in that body.
Harlem, over whose ruins the Spanish tyranny intended to make its
entrance into Holland, lay in the narrowest part of that narrow isthmus
which separates the Zuyder Zee from the German Ocean. The distance from
sea to sea is hardly five English miles across. Westerly from the city
extended a slender strip of land, once a morass, then a fruitful meadow;
maintained by unflagging fortitude in the very jaws of a stormy ocean.
Between the North Sea and the outer edge of this pasture surged those
wild and fantastic downs, heaped up by wind and wave in mimicry of
mountains; the long coils of that rope of sand, by which, plaited into
additional strength by the slenderest of bulrushes, the waves of the
North Sea were made to obey the command of man. On the opposite, or
eastern aide, Harlem looked towards Amsterdam. That already flourishing
city was distant but ten miles. The two cities were separated by an
expanse of inland water, and united by a slender causeway. The Harlem
Lake, formed less than a century before by the bursting of four lesser,
meres during a storm which had threatened to swallow the whole Peninsula,
extended itself on the south and east; a sea of limited dimensions, being
only fifteen feet in depth with seventy square miles of surface, but,
exposed as it lay to all the winds of heaven, often lashed into storms as
dangerous as those of the Atlantic. Beyond the lake, towards the north,
the waters of the Y nearly swept across the Peninsula. This inlet of the
Zuyder Zee was only separated from the Harlem mere by a slender thread of
land. Over this ran the causeway between the two sister cities, now so
unfortunately in arms against each other. Midway between the two, the
dyke was pierced and closed again with a system of sluice-works, which
when opened admitted the waters of the lake into those of the estuary,
and caused an inundation of the surrounding country.
The city was one of the largest and most beautiful in the Netherlands.
It was also one of the weakest.--The walls were of antique construction,
turreted, but not strong. The extent and feebleness of the defences made
a large garrison necessary, but unfortunately, the garrison was even
weaker than the walls. The city's main reliance was on the stout hearts
of the inhabitants. The streets were, for that day, spacious and
regular; the canals planted with limes and poplars. The ancient church
of Saint Bavon, a large imposing structure of brick, stood almost in the
centre of the place, the most prominent object, not only of the town but
of the province, visible over leagues of sea and of land more level than
the sea, and seeming to gather the whole quiet little city under its
sacred and protective wings. Its tall open-work leaden spire was
surmounted by a colossal crown, which an exalted imagination might have
regarded as the emblematic guerdon of martyrdom held aloft over the city,
to reward its heroism and its agony.
It was at once obvious that the watery expanse between Harlem and
Amsterdam would be the principal theatre of the operations about to
commence. The siege was soon begun. The fugitive burgomaster, De Fries,
had tho effrontery, with the advice of Alva, to address a letter to the
citizens, urging them to surrender at discretion. The messenger was
hanged--a cruel but practical answer, which put an end to all further
traitorous communications. This was in the first week of December. On
the 10th, Don Frederic, sent a strong detachment to capture the fort and
village of Sparendam, as an indispensable preliminary to the commencement
of the siege. A peasant having shown Zapata, the commander of the
expedition, a secret passage across the flooded and frozen meadows, the
Spaniards stormed the place gallantly, routed the whole garrison, killed
three hundred, and took possession of the works and village. Next day,
Don Frederic appeared before the walls of Harlem, and proceeded regularly
to invest the place. The misty weather favored his operations, nor did
he cease reinforcing himself; until at least thirty thousand men,
including fifteen hundred cavalry, had been encamped around the city.
The Germans, under Count Overstein, were stationed in a beautiful and
extensive grove of limes and beeches, which spread between the southern
walls and the shore of Harlem Lake. Don Frederic, with his Spaniards,
took up a position on the opposite side, at a place called the House of
Kleef, the ruins of which still remain. The Walloons, and other
regiments were distributed in different places, so as completely to
encircle the town.
[Pierre Sterlinckx: Eene come Waerachtige Beschryvinghe van alle
Geschiedinissen, Anschlagen, Stormen, Schermutsingen oude Schieten
voor de vroome Stadt Haerlem in Holland gheschicht, etc., etc.--
Delft, 1574.--This is by far the best contemporary account of the
famous siege. The author was a citizen of Antwerp, who kept a daily
journal of the events as they occurred at Harlem. It is a dry, curt
register of horrors, jotted down without passion or comment.--
Compare Bor, vi. 422, 423; Meteren, iv. 79; Mendoza, viii. 174,
175; Wagenaer, vad. Hist., vi. 413, 414.]
On the edge of the mere the Prince of Orange had already ordered a
cluster of forts to be erected, by which the command of its frozen
surface was at first secured for Harlem. In the course of the siege,
however, other forts were erected by Don Frederic, so that the aspect of
things suffered a change.
Against this immense force, nearly equal in number to that of the whole
population of the city, the garrison within the walls never amounted to
more than four thousand men. In the beginning it was much less numerous.
The same circumstances, however, which assisted the initiatory operations
of Don Frederic, were of advantage to the Harlemers. A dense frozen fog
hung continually over the surface of the lake. Covered by this curtain,
large supplies of men, provisions, and ammunition were daily introduced
into the city, notwithstanding all the efforts of the besieging force.
Sledges skimming over the ice, men, women, and even children, moving on
their skates as swiftly as the wind, all brought their contributions in
the course of the short dark days and long nights of December, in which
the wintry siege was opened.
The garrison at last numbered about one thousand pioneers or delvers,
three thousand fighting men, and about three hundred fighting women. The
last was a most efficient corps, all females of respectable character,
armed with sword, musket, and dagger. Their chief, Kenau Hasselaer,
was a widow of distinguished family and unblemished reputation, about
forty-seven years of age, who, at the head of her amazons, participated
in many of the most fiercely contested actions of the siege, both within
and without the walls. When such a spirit animated the maids and matrons
of the city, it might be expected that the men would hardly surrender the
place without a struggle. The Prince had assembled a force of three or
four thousand men at Leyden, which he sent before the middle of December
towards the city under the command of De la Marck. These troops were,
however, attacked on the way by a strong detachment under Bossu,
Noircarmes, and Romero. After a sharp, action in a heavy snow-storm, De
la Marek was completely routed. One thousand of his soldiers were cut to
pieces, and a large number carried off as prisoners to the gibbets, which
were already conspicuously erected in the Spanish camp, and which from
the commencement to the close of the siege were never bare of victims.
Among the captives was a gallant officer, Baptist van Trier, for whom De
la Marck in vain offered two thousand crowns and nineteen Spanish
prisoners. The proposition was refused with contempt. Van Trier was
hanged upon the gallows by one leg until he was dead, in return for which
barbarity the nineteen Spaniards were immediately gibbeted by De la
Marck. With this interchange of cruelties the siege may be said to have
opened.
Don Frederic had stationed himself in a position opposite to the gate of
the Cross, which was not very strong, but fortified by a ravelin.
Intending to make a very short siege of it, he established his batteries
immediately, and on the 18th, 19th, and 20th December directed a furious
cannonade against the Cross-gate, the St. John's-gate, and the curtain
between the two. Six hundred and eighty shots were discharged on the
first, and nearly as many on each of the two succeeding days. The walls
were much shattered, but men, women, and children worked night and day
within the city, repairing the breaches as fast as made. They brought
bags of sand; blocks of stone, cart-loads of earth from every quarter,
and they stripped the churches of all their statues, which they threw by
heaps into the gaps. If They sought thus a more practical advantage from
those sculptured saints than they could have gained by only imploring
their interposition. The fact, however, excited horror among the
besiegers. Men who were daily butchering their fellow-beings, and
hanging their prisoners in cold blood, affected to shudder at the
enormity of the offence thus exercised against graven images.
After three days' cannonade, the assault was ordered, Don Frederic only
intending a rapid massacre, to crown his achievements at--Zutphen and
Naarden. The place, he thought, would fall in a week, and after another
week of sacking, killing, and ravishing, he might sweep on to "pastures
new" until Holland was overwhelmed. Romero advanced to the breach,
followed by a numerous storming party, but met with a resistance which
astonished the Spaniards. The church bells rang the alarm throughout the
city, and the whole population swarmed to the walls. The besiegers were
encountered not only with sword and musket, but with every implement
which the burghers' hands could find. Heavy stones, boiling oil, live
coals, were hurled upon the heads of the soldiers; hoops, smeared with
pitch and set on fire, were dexterously thrown upon their necks. Even
Spanish courage and Spanish ferocity were obliged to shrink before the
steady determination of a whole population animated by a single spirit.
Romero lost an eye in the conflict, many officers were killed and
wounded, and three or four hundred soldiers left dead in the breach,
while only three or four of the townsmen lost their lives. The signal of
recal was reluctantly given, and the Spaniards abandoned the assault.
Don Frederic was now aware that Harlem would not fall at his feet at the
first sound of his trumpet. It was obvious that a siege must precede the
massacre. He gave orders therefore that the ravelin should be
undermined, and doubted not that, with a few days' delay, the place would
be in his hands.
Meantime, the Prince of Orange, from his head-quarters at Sassenheim, on
the southern extremity of the mere, made a fresh effort to throw succor
into the place. Two thousand men, with seven field-pieces, and many
wagon-loads of munitions, were sent forward under Batenburg. This
officer had replaced De la Marck, whom the Prince had at last deprived of
his commission. The reckless and unprincipled freebooter was no longer
to serve a cause which was more sullied by his barbarity than it could be
advanced by his desperate valor. Batenburg's expedition was, however,
not more successful than the one made by his predecessor. The troops,
after reaching the vicinity of the city, lost their way in the thick
mists, which almost perpetually enveloped the scene. Cannons were fired,
fog-bells were rung, and beacon fires were lighted on the ramparts, but
the party was irretrievably lost. The Spaniards fell upon them before
they could find their way to the city. Many were put to the sword,
others made their escape in different directions; a very few succeeded in
entering Harlem. Batenburg brought off a remnant of the forces, but all
the provisions so much needed were lost, and the little army entirely
destroyed.
De Koning, the second in command, was among the prisoners. The Spaniards
cut off his head and threw it over the walls into the city, with this
inscription: "This is the head of Captain de Koning, who is on his way
with reinforcements for the good city of Harlem." The citizens retorted
with a practical jest, which was still more barbarous. They cut off the
heads of eleven prisoners and put them into a barrel, which they threw
into the Spanish camp. A Label upon the barrel contained these words:
"Deliver these ten heads to Duke Alva in payment of his tenpenny tax,
with one additional head for interest." With such ghastly merriment did
besieged and besiegers vary the monotonous horror of that winter's siege.
As the sallies and skirmishes were of daily occurrence, there was a
constant supply of prisoners, upon whom both parties might exercise their
ingenuity, so that the gallows in camp or city was perpetually garnished.
Since the assault of the 21st December, Don Frederic had been making his
subterranean attack by regular approaches. As fast, however, as the
Spaniards mined, the citizens countermined. Spaniard and Netherlander
met daily in deadly combat within the bowels of the earth. Desperate and
frequent were the struggles within gangways so narrow that nothing but
daggers could be used, so obscure that the dim lanterns hardly lighted
the death-stroke. They seemed the conflicts, not of men but of evil
spirits. Nor were these hand-to-hand battles all. A shower of heads,
limbs, mutilated trunks, the mangled remains of hundreds of human beings,
often spouted from the earth as if from an invisible volcano. The mines
were sprung with unexampled frequency and determination. Still the
Spaniards toiled on with undiminished zeal, and still the besieged,
undismayed, delved below their works, and checked their advance by sword,
and spear, and horrible explosions.
The Prince of Orange, meanwhile, encouraged the citizens to persevere, by
frequent promises of assistance. His letters, written on extremely small
bits of paper; were sent into the town by carrier pigeons. On the 28th
of January he despatched a considerable supply of the two necessaries,
powder and bread, on one hundred and seventy sledges across the Harlem
Lake, together with four hundred veteran soldiers. The citizens
continued to contest the approaches to the ravelin before the Cross-gate,
but it had become obvious that they could not hold it long. Secretly,
steadfastly, and swiftly they had, therefore, during the long wintry
nights, been constructing a half moon of solid masonry on the inside of
the same portal. Old men, feeble women, tender children, united with the
able-bodied to accomplish this work, by which they hoped still to
maintain themselves after the ravelin had fallen:
On the 31st of January, after two or three days' cannonade against the
gates of the Cross and of Saint John, and the intervening curtains, Don
Frederic ordered a midnight assault. The walls had been much shattered,
part of the John's-gate was in ruins; the Spaniards mounted the breach
in great numbers; the city was almost taken by surprise; while the
Commander-in-chief, sure of victory, ordered the whole of his forces
under arms to cut off the population who were to stream panic-struck from
every issue. The attack was unexpected, but the forty or fifty sentinels
defended the walls while they sounded the alarm. The tocsin bells
tolled, and the citizens, whose sleep was not-apt to be heavy during that
perilous winter, soon manned the ramparts again. The daylight came upon
them while the fierce struggle was still at its height. The besieged, as
before, defended themselves with musket and rapier, with melted pitch,
with firebrands, with clubs and stones. Meantime, after morning prayers
in the Spanish camp, the trumpet for a general assault was sounded. A
tremendous onset was made upon the gate of the Cross, and the ravelin was
carried at last. The Spaniards poured into this fort, so long the object
of their attack, expecting instantly to sweep into the city with sword
and fire. As they mounted its wall they became for the first time aware
of the new and stronger fortification which had been secretly constructed
on the inner side. The reason why the ravelin had been at last conceded
was revealed. The half moon, whose existence they had not suspected,
rose before them bristling with cannon. A sharp fire was instantly
opened upon the besiegers, while at the same instant the ravelin, which
the citizens had undermined, blew up with a severe explosion, carrying
into the air all the soldiers who had just entered it so triumphantly.
This was the turning point. The retreat was sounded, and the Spaniards
fled to their camp, leaving at least three hundred dead beneath the
walls. Thus was a second assault, made by an overwhelming force and led
by the most accomplished generals of Spain, signally and gloriously
repelled by the plain burghers of Harlem.