John Baptist Tassis, next day, replied by declaring that in this case
Philip would send no more succours of men or money; for that the only
effectual counter-poison to the pretended conversion of the Prince of
Bearne was the immediate election of a king.
Thus did Mayenne escape from the snare in which the Spaniards thought to catch the man who, as they now knew, was changing every day, and was true to nothing save his own interests.
And now the great day had come. The conversion of Henry to the Roman faith, fixed long before for—the 23rd July,—1593, formally took place at the time appointed.
From six in the morning till the stroke of noon did Henry listen to the exhortations and expoundings of the learned prelates and doctors whom he had convoked, the politic Archbishop of Bourges taking the lead in this long-expected instruction. After six mortal hours had come to an end, the king rose from his knees, somewhat wearied, but entirely instructed and convinced. He thanked the bishops for having taught him that of which he was before quite ignorant, and assured them that; after having invoked the light, of the Holy Ghost upon his musings, he should think seriously over what they had just taught him, in order to come to a resolution salutary to himself and to the State.
Nothing could be more candid. Next day, at eight in the morning, there was a great show in the cathedral of Saint Denis, and the population of Paris, notwithstanding the prohibition of the League authorities, rushed thither in immense crowds to witness the ceremony of the reconciliation of the king. Henry went to the church, clothed as became a freshly purified heretic, in white satin doublet and hose, white silk stockings, and white silk shoes with white roses in them; but with a black hat and a black mantle. There was a great procession with blare of trumpet and beat of drum. The streets were strewn with flowers.
As Henry entered the great portal of the church, he found the Archbishop of Bourges, seated in state, effulgent in mitre and chasuble, and surrounded by other magnificent prelates in gorgeous attire.
"Who are you, and what do you want?" said the arch-bishop.
"I am the king," meekly replied Henry, "and I demand to be received into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church."
"Do you wish it sincerely?" asked the prelate.
"I wish it with all my heart," said the king.
Then throwing himself on his knees, the Bearne—great champion of the Huguenots—protested before God that he would live and die in the Catholic faith, and that he renounced all heresy. A passage was with difficulty opened through the crowd, and he was then led to the high altar, amid the acclamations of the people. Here he knelt devoutly and repeated his protestations. His unction and contrition were most impressive, and the people, of course, wept piteously. The king, during the progress of the ceremony, with hands clasped together and adoring the Eucharist with his eyes, or, as the Host was elevated, smiting himself thrice upon the breast, was a model of passionate devotion.
Afterwards he retired to a pavilion behind the altar, where the archbishop confessed and absolved him. Then the Te Deum sounded, and high mass was celebrated by the Bishop of Nantes. Then, amid acclamations and blessings, and with largess to the crowd, the king returned to the monastery of Saint Denis, where he dined amid a multitude of spectators, who thronged so thickly around him that his dinner-table was nearly overset. These were the very Parisians, who, but three years before, had been feeding on rats and dogs and dead men's bones, and the bodies of their own children, rather than open their gates to this same Prince of Bearne.
Now, although Mayenne had set strong guards at those gates, and had most strictly prohibited all egress, the city was emptied of its populace, which pressed in transports of adoration around the man so lately the object of their hate. Yet few could seriously believe that much change had been effected in the inner soul of him, whom the legate, and the Spaniard, and the holy father at Rome still continued to denounce as the vilest of heretics and the most infamous of impostors.
The comedy was admirably played out and was entirely successful. It may be supposed that the chief actor was, however, somewhat wearied. In private, he mocked at all this ecclesiastical mummery, and described himself as heartily sick of the business. "I arrived here last evening," he wrote to the beautiful Gabrielle, "and was importuned with 'God save you' till bed-time. In regard to the Leaguers I am of the order of St. Thomas. I am beginning to-morrow morning to talk to the bishops, besides those I told you about yesterday. At this moment of writing I have a hundred of these importunates on my shoulders, who will make me hate Saint Denis as much as you hate Mantes. 'Tis to-morrow that I take the perilous leap. I kiss a million times the beautiful hands of my angel and the mouth of my dear mistress."
A truce—renewed at intervals—with the Leaguers lasted till the end of the year. The Duke of Nevers was sent on special mission to Rome to procure the holy father's consent to the great heretic's reconciliation to the Church, and he was instructed to make the king's submission in terms so wholesale and so abject that even some of the life-long papists of France were disgusted, while every honest Protestant in Europe shrank into himself for shame. But Clement, overawed by Philip and his ambassador, was deaf to all the representations of the French envoy. He protested that he would not believe in the sincerity of the Bearne's conversion unless an angel from Heaven should reveal it to him. So Nevers left Rome, highly exasperated, and professing that he would rather have lost a leg, that he would rather have been sewn in a sack and tossed into the Tiber, than bear back such a message. The pope ordered the prelates who had accompanied Nevers to remain in Rome and be tried by the Inquisition for misprision of heresy, but the duke placed them by his side and marched out of the Porta del Popolo with them, threatening to kill any man who should attempt to enforce the command.
Meantime it became necessary to follow up the St. Denis comedy with a still more exhilarating popular spectacle. The heretic had been purified, confessed, absolved. It was time for a consecration. But there was a difficulty. Although the fever of loyalty to the ancient house of Bourbon, now redeemed from its worship of the false gods, was spreading contagiously through the provinces; although all the white silk in Lyons had been cut into scarves and banners to celebrate the reconciliation of the candid king with mother Church; although that ancient city was ablaze with bonfires and illuminations, while its streets ran red, with blood no longer, but with wine; and although Madam League, so lately the object of fondest adoration, was now publicly burned in the effigy of a grizzly hag; yet Paris still held for that decrepit beldame, and closed its gates to the Bearnese.
The city of Rheims, too, had not acknowledged the former Huguenot, and it was at Rheims, in the church of St. Remy, that the Holy Bottle was preserved. With what chrism, by what prelate, should the consecration of Henry be performed? Five years before, the League had proposed in the estates of Blois to place among the fundamental laws of the kingdom that no king should be considered a legitimate sovereign whose head had not been anointed by the bishop at Rheims with oil from that holy bottle. But it was now decided that to ascribe a monopoly of sanctity to that prelate and to that bottle would be to make a schism in the Church.
Moreover it was discovered that there was a chrism in existence still more efficacious than the famous oil of St. Remy. One hundred and twelve years before the baptism of Clovis, St. Martin had accidentally tumbled down stairs, and lay desperately bruised and at the point of death. But, according to Sulpicius Severus, an angel had straightway descended from heaven, and with a miraculous balsam had anointed the contusions of the saint, who next day felt no farther inconveniences from his fall. The balsam had ever since been preserved in the church of Marmoutier near Tours. Here, then, was the most potent of unguents brought directly from heaven. To mix a portion thereof with the chrism of consecration was clearly more judicious than to make use of the holy bottle, especially as the holy bottle was not within reach. The monks of Marmoutier consented to lend the sacred phial containing the famous oil of St. Martin for the grand occasion of the royal consecration.
Accompanied by a strong military escort provided by Giles de Souvri, governor of Touraine, a deputation of friars brought the phial to Chartres, where the consecration was to take place. Prayers were offered up, without ceasing, in the monastery during their absence that no mishap should befal the sacred treasure. When the monks arrived at Chartres, four young barons of the first nobility were assigned to them as hostages for the safe restoration of the phial, which was then borne in triumph to the cathedral, the streets through which it was carried being covered with tapestry. There was a great ceremony, a splendid consecration; six bishops, with mitres on their heads and in gala robes, officiating; after which the king knelt before the altar and took the customary oath.
Thus the champion of the fierce Huguenots, the well-beloved of the dead La Noue and the living Duplessis Mornay, the devoted knight of the heretic Queen Elizabeth, the sworn ally of the stout Dutch Calvinists, was pompously reconciled to that Rome which was the object of their hatred and their fear.
The admirably arranged spectacles of the instruction at St. Denis and the consecration at Chartres were followed on the day of the vernal equinox by a third and most conclusive ceremony:
A secret arrangement had been made with De Cosse-Brissac, governor of Paris, by the king, according to which the gates of Paris were at last to be opened to him. The governor obtained a high price for his services—three hundred thousand livres in hard cash, thirty thousand a year for his life, and the truncheon of marshal of France. Thus purchased, Brissac made his preparations with remarkable secrecy and skill. Envoy Ybarra, who had scented something suspicious in the air, had gone straight to the governor for information, but the keen Spaniard was thrown out by the governor's ingenuous protestations of ignorance. The next morning, March 22nd, was stormy and rainy, and long before daylight Ybarra, still uneasy despite the statements of Brissac, was wandering about the streets of Paris when he became the involuntary witness of an extraordinary spectacle.
Through the wind and the rain came trampling along the dark streets of the capital a body of four thousand troopers and lansquenettes. Many torch-bearers attended on the procession, whose flambeaux threw a lurid light upon the scene.
There, surrounded by the swart and grizzly bearded visages of these strange men-at-arms, who were discharging their arquebuses, as they advanced upon any bystanders likely to oppose their progress; in the very midst of this sea of helmed heads, the envoy was enabled to recognise the martial figure of the Prince of Bearne. Armed to the teeth, with sword in hand and dagger at side, the hero of Ivry rode at last through the barriers which had so long kept him from his capital. "'Twas like enchantment," said Ybarra. The first Bourbon entered the city through the same gate out of which the last Valois had, five years before, so ignominiously fled. It was a midnight surprise, although not fully accomplished until near the dawn of day. It was not a triumphal entrance; nor did Henry come as the victorious standard-bearer of a great principle. He had defeated the League in many battle-fields, but the League still hissed defiance at him from the very hearthstone of his ancestral palace. He had now crept, in order to conquer, even lower than the League itself; and casting off his Huguenot skin at last, he had soared over the heads of all men, the presiding genius of the holy Catholic Church.
Twenty-one years before, he had entered the same city on the conclusion of one of the truces which had varied the long monotony of the religious wars of France. The youthful son of Antony Bourbon and Joan of Albret had then appeared as the champion and the idol of the Huguenots. In the same year had come the fatal nuptials with the bride of St. Bartholomew, the first Catholic conversion of Henry and the massacre at which the world still shudders.
Now he was chief of the "Politicians," and sworn supporter of the Council of Trent. Earnest Huguenots were hanging their heads in despair.
He represented the principle of national unity against national dismemberment by domestic treason and foreign violence. Had that principle been his real inspiration, as it was in truth his sole support, history might judge him more leniently. Had he relied upon it entirely it might have been strong enough to restore him to the throne of his ancestors, without the famous religious apostacy with which his name is for ever associated. It is by no means certain that permanent religious toleration might not have been the result of his mounting the throne, only when he could do so without renouncing the faith of his fathers. A day of civilization may come perhaps, sooner or later, when it will be of no earthly cousequence to their fellow creatures to what creed, what Christian church, what religious dogma kings or humbler individuals may be partial; when the relations between man and his Maker shall be undefiled by political or social intrusion. But the day will never come when it will be otherwise than damaging to public morality and humiliating to human dignity to forswear principle for a price, and to make the most awful of mysteries the subject of political legerdemain and theatrical buffoonery.
The so-called conversion of the king marks an epoch in human history. It strengthened the Roman Church and gave it an indefinite renewal of life; but it sapped the foundations of religious faith. The appearance of Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent was of itself too biting an epigram not to be extensively destructive. Whether for good or ill, religion was fast ceasing to be the mainspring of political combinations, the motive of great wars and national convulsions. The age of religion was to be succeeded by the age of commerce.
But the king was now on his throne. All Paris was in rapture. There was Te Deum with high mass in Notre Dame, and the populace was howling itself hoarse with rapture in honour of him so lately the object of the general curse. Even the Sorbonne declared in favour of the reclaimed heretic, and the decision of those sages had vast influence with less enlightened mortals. There was nothing left for the Duke of Feria but to take himself off and make Latin orations in favour of the Infanta elsewhere, if fit audience elsewhere could be found. A week after the entrance of Henry, the Spanish garrison accordingly was allowed to leave Paris with the honours of war.
"We marched out at 2 P.M.," wrote the duke to his master, "with closed ranks, colours displayed, and drums beating. First came the Italians and then the Spaniards, in the midst of whom was myself on horseback, with the Walloons marching near me. The Prince of Bearne"—it was a solace to the duke's heart, of which he never could be deprived, to call the king by that title—"was at a window over the gate of St. Denis through which we took our departure. He was dressed in light grey, with a black hat surmounted by a great white feather. Our displayed standards rendered him no courteous salute as we passed."
Here was another solace!
Thus had the game been lost and won, but Philip as usual did not acknowledge himself beaten. Mayenne, too, continued to make the most fervent promises to all that was left of the confederates. He betook himself to Brussels, and by the king's orders was courteously received by the Spanish authorities in the Netherlands. In the midst of the tempest now rapidly destroying all rational hopes, Philip still clung to Mayenne as to a spar in the shipwreck. For the king ever possessed the virtue, if it be one, of continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible, when he had been defeated in every quarter, and when his calculations had all proved ridiculous mistakes.
When his famous Armada had been shattered and sunk, have we not seen him peevishly requiring Alexander Farnese to construct a new one immediately and to proceed therewith to conquer England out of hand? Was it to be expected that he would renounce his conquest of France, although the legitimate king had entered his capital, had reconciled himself to the Church, and was on the point of obtaining forgiveness of the pope? If the Prince of Bearne had already destroyed the Holy League, why should not the Duke of Mayenne and Archduke Ernest make another for him, and so conquer France without further delay?
But although it was still possible to deceive the king, who in the universality of his deceptive powers was so prone to delude himself, it was difficult even for so accomplished an intriguer as Mayenne to hoodwink much longer the shrewd Spaniards who were playing so losing a game against him.
"Our affairs in France," said Ybarra, "are in such condition that we are losing money and character there, and are likely to lose all the provinces here, if things are not soon taken up in a large and energetic manner. Money and troops are what is wanted on a great scale for France. The king's agents are mightily discontented with Mayenne, and with reason; but they are obliged to dissimulate and to hold their tongues. We can send them no assistance from these regions, unless from down yonder you send us the cloth and the scissors to cut it with."
And the Archduke Ernest, although he invited Mayenne to confer with him at Brussels, under the impression that he could still keep him and the Duke of Guise from coming to an arrangement with Bearne, hardly felt more confidence in the man than did Feria or Ybarra. "Since the loss of Paris," said Ernest, "I have had a letter from Mayenne, in which, deeply affected by that event, he makes me great offers, even to the last drop of his blood, vowing never to abandon the cause of the League. But of the intentions and inner mind of this man I find such vague information, that I don't dare to expect more stability from him than may be founded upon his own interest."
And so Mayenne came to Brussels and passed three days with the archduke. "He avows himself ready to die in our cause," said Ernest. "If your Majesty will give men and money enough, he will undertake so to deal with Bearne that he shall not think himself safe in his own house." The archduke expressed his dissatisfaction to Mayenne that with the money he had already received, so little had been accomplished, but he still affected a confidence which he was far from feeling, "because," said he, "it is known that Mayenne is already treating with Bearne. If he has not concluded those arrangements, it is because Bearne now offers him less money than before." The amount of dissimulation, politely so-called, practised by the grandees of that age, to say nothing of their infinite capacity for pecuniary absorption, makes the brain reel and enlarges one's ideas of the human faculties as exerted in certain directions. It is doubtful whether plain Hans Miller or Hans Baker could have risen to such level.
Feria wrote a despatch to the king, denouncing Mayenne as false, pernicious to the cause of Spain and of catholicism, thoroughly self-seeking and vile, and as now most traitorous to the cause of the confederacy, engaged in surrendering its strong places to the enemy, and preparing to go over to the Prince of Bearne.
"If," said he, "I were to recount all his base tricks, I should go on till midnight, and perhaps till to-morrow morning."
This letter, being intercepted, was sent with great glee by Henry IV., not to the royal hands for which it was destined, but to the Duke of Mayenne. Great was the wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths. He forthwith fulminated a scathing reply, addressed to Philip II., in which he denounced the Duke of Feria as "a dirty ignoramus, an impudent coward, an impostor, and a blind thief;" adding, after many other unsavoury epithets, "but I will do him an honour which he has not merited, proving him a liar with my sword; and I humbly pray your Majesty to grant me this favour and to pardon my just grief, which causes me to depart from the respect due to your Majesty, when I speak of this impostor who has thus wickedly torn my reputation."
His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments in defence of that tattered reputation. The defiance to mortal combat went for nothing; and, in the course of the next year, the injured Mayenne turned his back on Philip and his Spaniards, and concluded his bargain with the Prince of Bearne. He obtained good terms: the government of Burgundy, payment of his debts, and a hundred and twenty thousand crowns in hard cash. It is not on record that the man of his word, of credit, and of truth, ever restored a penny of the vast sums which he had received from Philip to carry on the business of the League.
Subsequently the duke came one very hot summer's-day to Monceaux to thank the king, as he expressed it, for "delivering him from Spanish arrogance and Italian wiles;" and having got with much difficulty upon his knees, was allowed to kiss the royal hand. Henry then insisted upon walking about with him through the park at a prodigious rate, to show him all the improvements, while the duke panted, groaned, and perspired in his vain efforts to keep pace with his new sovereign.
"If I keep this fat fellow walking about in the sun much longer," whispered the king to De Bethune, who was third in the party, "I shall be sufficiently avenged for all the mischief he has done us."
At last, when the duke was forced to admit himself to be on the point of expiring with fatigue, he was dismissed to the palace with orders to solace himself with a couple of bottles of excellent wine of Arbois, expressly provided for him by the king's direction. And this was all the punishment ever inflicted by the good-humoured monarch on the corpulent conspirator.
The Duke of Guise made his arrangements with the ex-Huguenot on even better terms and at a still earlier day; while Joyeuse and Mercoeur stood out a good while and higgled hard for conditions. "These people put such a high price on themselves," said one of Henry's diplomatists, "that one loses almost more than one gains in buying them. They strip and plunder us even in our nakedness, and we are obliged, in order to conciliate such harpies, to employ all that we can scrape out of our substance and our blood. I think, however, that we ought to gain them by whatever means and at whatever price."
Thus Henry IV., the man whom so many contemporary sages had for years been rebuking or ridiculing for his persistency in a hopeless attempt to save his country from dismemberment, to restore legitimate authority, and to resist the "holy confederacy" of domestic traitors, aided by foreign despots and sympathizers, was at last successful, and the fratricidal war in France was approaching its only possible conclusion.
But, alas! the hopes of those who loved the reformed Church as well as they loved their country were sadly blasted by the apostasy of their leader. From the most eminent leaders of the Huguenots there came a wail, which must have penetrated even to the well-steeled heart of the cheerful Gascon. "It will be difficult," they said, "to efface very soon from your memory the names of the men whom the sentiment of a common religion, association in the same perils and persecutions, a common joy in the same deliverance, and the long experience of so many faithful services, have engraved there with a pencil of diamond. The remembrance of these things pursues you and accompanies you everywhere; it interrupts your most important affairs, your most ardent pleasures, your most profound slumber, to represent to you, as in a picture, yourself to yourself: yourself not as you are to-day, but such as you were when, pursued to the death by the greatest princes of Europe, you went on conducting to the harbour of safety the little vessel against which so many tempests were beating."
The States of the Dutch republic, where the affair of Henry's conversion was as much a matter of domestic personal interest as it could be in France—for religion up to that epoch was the true frontier between nation and nation—debated the question most earnestly while it was yet doubtful. It was proposed to send a formal deputation to the king, in order to divert him, if possible, from the fatal step which he was about to take. After ripe deliberation however, it was decided to leave the matter "in the hands of God Almighty, and to pray Him earnestly to guide the issue to His glory and the welfare of the Churches."
The Queen of England was, as might be supposed, beside herself with indignation, and, in consequence of the great apostasy, and of her chronic dissatisfaction with the manner in which her contingent of troops had been handled in France, she determined to withdraw every English soldier from the support of Henry's cause. The unfortunate French ambassador in London was at his wits' ends. He vowed that he could not sleep of nights, and that the gout and the cholic, to which he was always a martyr, were nothing to the anguish which had now come upon his soul and brain, such as he had never suffered since the bloody day of St. Bartholomew.
"Ah, my God!" said he to Burghley, "is it possible that her just choler has so suddenly passed over the great glory which she has acquired by so many benefits and liberalities?" But he persuaded himself that her majesty would after all not persist in her fell resolution. To do so, he vowed, would only be boiling milk for the French papists, who would be sure to make the most of the occasion in order to precipitate the king into the, abyss, to the border of which they had already brought him. He so dreaded the ire of the queen that he protested he was trembling all over merely to see the pen of his secretary wagging as he dictated his despatches. Nevertheless it was his terrible duty to face her in her wrath, and he implored the lord treasurer to accompany him and to shield him at the approaching interview. "Protect me," he cried, "by your wisdom from the ire of this great princess; for by the living God, when I see her enraged against any person whatever I wish myself in Calcutta, fearing her anger like death itself."
When all was over, Henry sent De Morlans as special envoy to communicate the issue to the Governments of England and of Holland. But the queen, although no longer so violent, was less phlegmatic than the States-General, and refused to be comforted. She subsequently receded, however, from her determination to withdraw her troops from France.
"Ah! what grief; ah! what regrets; ah! what groans, have I felt in my soul," she wrote, "at the sound of the news brought to me by Morlans! My God! Is it possible that any wordly respect can efface the terror of Divine wrath? Can we by reason even expect a good sequel to such iniquitous acts? He who has maintained and preserved you by His mercy, can you imagine that he permits you to walk alone in your utmost need? 'Tis bad to do evil that good may come of it. Meantime I shall not cease to put you in the first rank of my devotions, in order that the hands of Esau may not spoil the blessings of Jacob. As to your promises to me of friendship and fidelity, I confess to have dearly deserved them, nor do I repent, provided you do not change your Father—otherwise I shall be your bastard sister by the father's side—for I shall ever love a natural better than an adopted one. I desire that God may guide you in a straight road and a better path. Your most sincere sister in the old fashion. As to the new, I have nothing to do with it. ELIZABETH R."
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
All fellow-worms together
Continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible
He spent more time at table than the Bearnese in sleep
Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent
Highest were not necessarily the least slimy
His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments
History is a continuous whole of which we see only fragments
Infinite capacity for pecuniary absorption
Leading motive with all was supposed to be religion
Past was once the Present, and once the Future
Sages of every generation, read the future like a printed scroll
Sewers which have ever run beneath decorous Christendom
Wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths
HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce—1609
By John Lothrop Motley
History United Netherlands, Volume 66, 1594
CHAPTER XXX.
Prince Maurice lays siege to Gertruydenberg—Advantages of the new system of warfare—Progress of the besieging operations—Superiority of Maurice's manoeuvres—Adventure of Count Philip of Nassau— Capitulation of Gertruydenberg—Mutiny among the Spanish troops— Attempt of Verdugo to retake Coeworden—Suspicions of treason in the English garrison at Ostend—Letter of Queen Elizabeth to Sir Edward Norris on the subject—Second attempt on Coeworden—Assault on Groningen by Maurice—Second adventure of Philip of Nassau—Narrow escape of Prince Maurice—Surrender of Groningen—Particulars of the siege—Question of religious toleration—Progress of the United Netherlands—Condition of the "obedient" Netherlands—Incompetency of Peter Mansfeld as Governor—Archduke Ernest, the successor of Farnese—Difficulties of his position—His unpopularity—Great achievements of the republicans—Triumphal entry of Ernest into Brussels and Antwerp—Magnificence of the spectacle—Disaffection of the Spanish troops—Great military rebellion—Philip's proposal to destroy the English fleet—His assassination plans—Plot to poison Queen Elizabeth—Conspiracies against Prince Maurice—Futile attempts at negotiation—Proposal of a marriage between Henry and the Infanta—Secret mission from Henry to the King of Spain—Special dispatch to England and the Staten—Henry obtains further aid from Queen Elizabeth and the States—Council—Anxiety of the Protestant countries to bring about a war with Spain—Aspect of affairs at the close of the year 1594.
While Philip's world-empire seemed in one direction to be so rapidly fading into cloudland there were substantial possessions of the Spanish crown which had been neglected in Brabant and Friesland.
Two very important cities still held for the King of Spain within the territories of what could now be fairly considered the United Dutch Republic—St. Gertruydenberg and Groningen.
Early in the spring of 1593, Maurice had completed his preparations for a siege, and on the 24th March appeared before Gertruydenberg.
It was a stately, ancient city, important for its wealth, its strength, and especially for its position. For without its possession even the province of Holland could hardly consider itself mistress of its own little domains. It was seated on the ancient Meuse, swollen as it approached the sea almost to the dimension of a gulf, while from the south another stream, called the Donge, very brief in its course, but with considerable depth of water, came to mingle itself with the Meuse, exactly under the walls of the city.
The site of the place was so low that it was almost hidden and protected by its surrounding dykes. These afforded means of fortification, which had been well improved. Both by nature and art the city was one of the strongholds of the Netherlands.
Maurice had given the world a lesson in the beleaguering science at the siege of Steenwyk, such as had never before been dreamt of; but he was resolved that the operations before Gertruydenberg should constitute a masterpiece.
Nothing could be more beautiful as a production of military art, nothing, to the general reader, more insipid than its details.
On the land side, Hohenlo's headquarters were at Ramsdonck, a village about a German mile to the east of Gertruydenberg. Maurice himself was established on the west side of the city. Two bridges constructed across the Donge facilitated the communications between the two camps, while great quantities of planks and brush were laid down across the swampy roads to make them passable for waggon-trains and artillery. The first care of the young general, whose force was not more than twenty thousand men, was to protect himself rather than to assail the town.
His lines extended many miles in a circuit around the place, and his forts, breastworks, and trenches were very numerous.
The river was made use of as a natural and almost impassable ditch of defence, and windmills were freely employed to pump water into the shallows in one direction, while in others the outer fields, in quarters whence a relieving force might be expected, were turned into lakes by the same machinery. Farther outside, a system of palisade work of caltrops and man-traps—sometimes in the slang of the day called Turkish ambassadors—made the country for miles around impenetrable or very disagreeable to cavally. In a shorter interval than would have seemed possible, the battlements and fortifications of the besieging army had risen like an exhalation out of the morass. The city of Gertruydenberg was encompassed by another city as extensive and apparently as impregnable as itself. Then, for the first time in that age, men thoroughly learned the meaning of that potent implement the spade.
Three thousand pioneers worked night and day with pickaxe and shovel. The soldiers liked the business; for every man so employed received his ten stivers a day additional wages, punctually paid, and felt moreover that every stioke was bringing the work nearer to its conclusion.
The Spaniards no longer railed at Maurice as a hedger and ditcher. When he had succeeded in bringing a hundred great guns to bear upon the beleaguered city they likewise ceased to sneer at heavy artillery.
The Kartowen and half Kartowen were no longer considered "espanta vellacos."
Meantime, from all the country round, the peasants flocked within the lines. Nowhere in Europe were provisions so plentiful and cheap as in the Dutch camp. Nowhere was a readier market for agricultural products, prompter payment, or more perfect security for the life and property of non-combatants. Not so much as a hen's egg was taken unlawfully. The country people found themselves more at ease within Maurice's lines than within any other part of the provinces, obedient or revolted. They ploughed and sowed and reaped at their pleasure, and no more striking example was ever afforded of the humanizing effect of science upon the barbarism of war, than in this siege of Gertruydenberg.
Certainly it was the intention of the prince to take his city, and when he fought the enemy it was his object to kill; but, as compared with the bloody work which Alva, and Romero, and Requesens, and so many others had done in those doomed provinces, such war-making as this seemed almost like an institution for beneficent and charitable purposes.
Visitors from the neighbourhood, from other provinces, from foreign countries, came to witness the extraordinary spectacle, and foreign generals repaired to the camp of Maurice to take practical lessons in the new art of war.
Old Peter Ernest Mansfeld, who was nominal governor of the Spanish Netherlands since the death of Farnese, rubbed his eyes and stared aghast when the completeness of the preparations for reducing the city at last broke in upon his mind. Count Fuentes was the true and confidential regent however until the destined successor to Parma should arrive; but Fuentes, although he had considerable genius for assassination, as will hereafter appear, and was an experienced and able commander of the old-fashioned school, was no match for Maurice in the scientific combinations on which the new system was founded.
In vain did the superannuated Peter call aloud upon his sofa and governor, Count Charles, to assist him in this dire dilemma. That artillery general had gone with a handful of Germans, Walloons; and other obedient Netherlanders—too few to accomplish anything abroad, too many to be spared from the provinces—to besiege Noyon in France. But what signified the winning or losing of such a place as Noyon at exactly the moment when the Prince of Bearne, assisted by the able generalship of the Archbishop of Bourges, had just executed those famous flanking movements in the churches of St. Denis and Chartres, by which the world-empire had been effectually shattered, and Philip and the Pope completely out-manoeuvred.
Better that the five thousand fighters under Charles Mansfeld had been around Gertruydenberg. His aged father did what he could. As many men as could be spared from the garrison of Antwerp and its neighbourhood were collected; but the Spaniards were reluctant to march, except under old Mondragon. That hero, who had done much of the hardest work, and had fought in most of the battles of the century, was nearly as old as the century. Being now turned of ninety, he thought best to keep house in Antwerp Castle: Accordingly twelve thousand foot and three thousand horse took the field under the more youthful Peter Ernest? But Peter Ernest, when his son was not there to superintend his operations, was nothing but a testy octogenarian, while the two together were not equal to the little finger of Farnese, whom Philip would have displaced, had he not fortunately died.
"Nothing is to be expected out of this place but toads and poison," wrote Ybarra in infinite disgust to the two secretaries of state at Madrid. "I have done my best to induce Fuentes to accept that which the patent secured him, and Count Peter is complaining that Fuentes showed him the patent so late only to play him a trick. There is a rascally pack of meddlers here, and the worst of them all are the women, whom I particularly give to the devil. There is no end to the squabbles as to who shall take the lead in relieving Gertruydenberg."
Mansfeld at last came ponderously up in the neighbourhood of Turnhout. There was a brilliant little skirmish, in the, neighbourhood of this place, in which a hundred and fifty Dutch cavalry under the famous brothers Bax defeated four hundred picked lancers of Spain and Italy. But Mansfeld could get nothing but skirmishes. In vain he plunged about among the caltrops and man-traps. In vain he knocked at the fortifications of Hohenlo on the east and of Maurice on the west. He found them impracticable, impregnable, obdurate. It was Maurice's intention to take his town at as small sacrifice of life as possible. A trumpet was sent on some trifling business to Mansfeld, in reply to a communication made by the general to Maurice.
"Why does your master," said the choleric veteran to the trumpeter, "why does Prince Maurice, being a lusty young commander as he is, not come out of his trenches into the open field and fight me like a man, where honour and fame await him?"
"Because my master," answered the trumpeter, "means to live to be a lusty old commander like your excellency, and sees no reason to-day to give you an advantage."
At this the bystanders laughed, rather at the expense of the veteran.
Meantime there were not many incidents within the lines or within the city to vary the monotony of the scientific siege.
On the land side, as has been seen, the city was enclosed and built out of human sight by another Gertruydenberg. On the wide estuary of the Meuse, a chain of war ships encircled the sea-front, in shape of a half moon, lying so close to each other that it was scarcely possible even for a messenger to swim out of a dark night.
The hardy adventurers who attempted that feat with tidings of despair were almost invariably captured.
This blockading fleet took regular part in the daily cannonade; while, on the other hand, the artillery practice from the landbatteries of Maurice and Hohenlo was more perfect than anything ever known before in the Netherlands or France.
And the result was that in the course of the cannonade which lasted nearly ninety days, not more than four houses in the city escaped injury. The approaches were brought, every hour, nearer and nearer to the walls. With subterranean lines converging in the form of the letter Y, the prince had gradually burrowed his way beneath the principal bastion.
Hohenlo, representative of the older school of strategy, had on one occasion ventured to resist the authority of the commander-in-chief. He had constructed a fort at Ramsdonck. Maurice then commanded the erection of another, fifteen hundred yards farther back. It was as much a part of his purpose to defend himself against the attempts of Mansfeld's relieving force, as to go forward against the city. Hohenlo objected that it would be impossible to sustain himself against a sudden attack in so isolated a position. Maurice insisted. In the midst of the altercation Hohenlo called to the men engaged in throwing up the new fortifications: "Here, you captains and soldiers," he cried, "you are delivered up here to be butchered. You may drop work and follow me to the old fort."
"And I swear to you," said Maurice quietly, "that the first man who moves from this spot shall be hanged."
No one moved. The fort was completed and held to the and; Hohenlo sulkily acquiescing in the superiority which this stripling—his former pupil—had at last vindicated over all old-fashioned men-at-arms.
From the same cause which was apt to render Hohenlo's services inefficient, the prince was apt to suffer inconvenience in the persons placed in still nearer relation to himself. Count Philip of Nassau, brother of the wise and valiant Lewis William, had already done much brilliant campaigning against the Spaniards both in France and the provinces. Unluckily, he was not only a desperate fighter but a mighty drinker, and one day, after a dinner-party and potent carouse at Colonel Brederode's quarters, he thought proper, in doublet and hose, without armour of any kind, to mount his horse, in order to take a solitary survey of the enemy's works. Not satisfied with this piece of reconnoitering—which he effected with much tipsy gravity, but probably without deriving any information likely to be of value to the commanding general—he then proceeded to charge in person a distant battery. The deed was not commendable in a military point of view. A fire was opened upon him at long range so soon as he was discovered, and at the same time the sergeant-major of his regiment and an equerry of Prince Maurice started in pursuit, determined to bring him off if possible, before his life had been thus absurdly sacrificed. Fortunately for him they came to the rescue in time, pulled him from his horse, and succeeded in bringing him away unharmed. The sergeant-major, however, Sinisky by name, while thus occupied in preserving the count's life, was badly wounded in the leg by a musket-shot from the fort; which casualty was the only result of this after-dinner assault.
As the siege proceeded, and as the hopes of relief died away, great confusion began to reign within the city. The garrison, originally of a thousand veterans, besides burgher militia, had been much diminished. Two commandants of the place, one after another, had lost their lives. On the 1st of June, Governor De Masieres, Captain Mongyn, the father-confessor of the garrison, and two soldiers, being on the top of the great church tower taking observations, were all brought down with one cannon-shot. Thus the uses of artillery were again proved to be something more than to scare cowards.
The final result seemed to have been brought about almost by accident, if accident could be admitted as a factor in such accurate calculations as those of Maurice. On the 24th June Captains Haen and Bievry were relieving watch in the trenches near the great north ravelin of the town—a bulwark which had already been much undermined from below and weakened above. Being adventurous officers, it occurred to them suddenly to scale the wall of the fort and reconnoitre what was going on in the town. It was hardly probable that they would come back alive from the expedition, but they nevertheless threw some planks across the ditch, and taking a few soldiers with them, climbed cautiously up. Somewhat to his own surprise, still more to that of the Spanish sentinels, Bievry in a few minutes found himself within the ravelin. He was closely followed by Captain Haen, Captain Kalf, and by half a company of soldiers. The alarm was given. There was a fierce hand-to-hand struggle. Sixteen of the bold stormers fell, and nine of the garrison of the fort. The rest fled into the city. The governor of the place, Captain Gysant, rushing to the rescue without staying to put on his armour, was killed. Count Solms, on the other hand, came from the besieging camp into the ravelin to investigate the sudden uproar. To his profound astonishment he was met there, after a brief interval, by a deputation from the city, asking for terms of surrender. The envoys had already been for some little time looking in vain for a responsible person with whom to treat. When Maurice was informed of the propositions he thought it at first a trick; for he had known nothing of the little adventure of the three captains. Soon afterwards he came into a battery whither the deputies had been brought, and the terms of capitulation were soon agreed upon.
Next day the garrison were allowed to go out with sidearms and personal baggage, and fifty waggons were lent them by the victor to bring their wounded men to Antwerp.
Thus was Gertruydenberg surrendered in the very face of Peter Mansfeld, who only became aware of the fact by the salvos of artillery fired in honour of the triumph, and by the blaze of illumination which broke forth over camp and city.
The sudden result was an illustration of the prince's perfect arrangements. When Maurice rode into the town, he found it strong enough and sufficiently well provisioned to have held out many a long day. But it had been demonstrated to the besieged that relief was impossible, and that the surrender on one day or another, after the siege operations should be brought to their close, was certain. The inexorable genius of the commander—skilled in a science which to the coarser war-makers of that age seemed almost superhuman—hovered above them like a fate. It was as well to succumb on the 24th June as to wait till the 24th July.
Moreover the great sustaining principle—resistance to the foreigner—which had inspired the deeds of daring, the wonders of endurance, in the Dutch cities beleaguered so remorselessly by the Spaniard twenty years earlier in the century, was wanting.
In surrendering to the born Netherlander—the heroic chieftain of the illustrious house of Nassau—these Netherlanders were neither sullying their flag nor injuring their country. Enough had been done for military honour in the gallant resistance, in which a large portion of the garrison had fallen. Nor was that religious superstition so active within the city, which three years before had made miracles possible in Paris when a heretic sovereign was to be defied by his own subjects. It was known that even if the public ceremonies of the Catholic Church were likely to be suspended for a time after the surrender, at least the rights of individual conscience and private worship within individual households would be tolerated, and there was no papal legate with fiery eloquence persuading a city full of heroic dupes that it was more virtuous for men or women to eat their own children than to forego one high mass, or to wink at a single conventicle.
After all, it was no such bitter hardship for the citizens of Gertruydenberg to participate in the prosperity of the rising and thriving young republic, and to enjoy those municipal and national liberties which her sister cities had found so sweet.
Nothing could be calmer or more reasonable than such a triumph, nothing less humiliating or less disastrous than such a surrender.
The problem was solved, the demonstration was made. To open their gates to the soldiers of the Union was not to admit the hordes of a Spanish commander with the avenging furies of murder, pillage, rape, which ever followed in their train over the breach of a captured city.
To an enemy bated or dreaded to the uttermost mortal capacity, that well-fortified and opulent city might have held out for months, and only when the arms and the fraud of the foe without, and of famine within, had done their work, could it have bowed its head to the conqueror, and submitted to the ineffable tortures which would be the necessary punishment of its courage.
Four thousand shots had been fired from the siege-guns upon the city, and three hundred upon the relieving force.
The besieging army numbered in all nine thousand one hundred and fifty men of all arms, and they lost during the eighty-five days' siege three hundred killed and four hundred wounded.
After the conclusion of these operations, and the thorough remodelling of the municipal government of the important city thus regained to the republic, Maurice occupied himself with recruiting and refreshing his somewhat exhausted little army. On the other hand, old Count Mansfeld, dissatisfied with the impotent conclusion to his attempts, retired to Brussels to be much taunted by the insolent Fuentes. He at least escaped very violent censure on the part of his son Charles, for that general, after his superfluous conquest of Noyon, while returning towards the Netherlands, far too tardily to succour Gertruydenberg, had been paralyzed in all his movements by a very extensive mutiny which broke out among the Spanish troops in the province of Artois. The disorder went through all its regular forms. A town was taken, an Eletto was appointed. The country-side was black-mailed or plundered, and the rebellion lasted some thirteen months. Before it was concluded there was another similar outbreak among the Italians, together with the Walloons and other obedient Netherlanders in Hainault, who obliged the city of Mons to collect nine hundred florins a day for them. The consequence of these military rebellions was to render the Spanish crown almost powerless during the whole year, within the provinces nominally subject to its sway. The cause—as always—was the non-payment of these veterans' wages, year after year. It was impossible for Philip, with all the wealth of the Indies and Mexico pouring through the Danaid sieve of the Holy League in France, to find the necessary funds to save the bronzed and war-worn instruments of his crimes in the Netherlands from starving and from revolt.
Meantime there was much desultory campaigning in Friesland. Verdugo and Frederic van den Berg picked up a few cities, and strong places which had thrown off their allegiance September, to the king—Auerzyl, Schlochteren, Winschoten, Wedde, Ootmarzum—and invested the much more important town of Coeworden, which Maurice had so recently reduced to the authority of the Union. Verdugo's force was insufficient, however, and he had neither munitions nor provisions for a long siege. Winter was coming on; and the States, aware that he would soon be obliged to retire from before the well-garrisoned and fortified place, thought it unnecessary to interfere with him. After a very brief demonstration the Portuguese veteran was obliged to raise the siege.
There were also certain vague attempts made by the enemy to re-possess himself of those most important seaports which had been pledged to the English queen. On a previous page the anxiety has been indicated with which Sir Robert Sydney regarded the withdrawal of the English troops in the Netherlands for the sake of assisting the French king. This palpable breach of the treaty had necessarily weakened England's hold on the affections of the Netherlanders, and awakened dark suspicions that treason might be impending at Flushing or Ostend. The suspicions were unjust—so far as the governors of those places were concerned—for Sydney and Norris were as loyal as they were intelligent and brave; but the trust in their characters was not more implicit than it had been in that of Sir William Stanley before the commission of his crime. It was now believed that the enemy was preparing for a sudden assault upon Ostend, with the connivance, it was feared, of a certain portion of the English garrison. The intelligence was at once conveyed to her Majesty's Government by Sir Edward Norris, and they determined to take a lesson from past experience. Norris was at once informed that in view of the attack which he apprehended, his garrison should be strengthened by five hundred men under Sir Conyers Clifford from certain companies in Flushing, and that other reinforcements should be sent from the English troops in Normandy. The governor was ordered to look well after his captains and soldiers, to remind them, in the queen's name, of their duty to herself and to the States, to bid all beware of sullying the English name, to make close investigations into any possible intrigues of the garrison with the enemy, and, should any culprits be found, to bring them at once to condign punishment.
The queen, too, determined that there should be no blighting of English honour, if she could prevent it by her warnings, indited with her own hand a characteristic letter to Sir Edward Norris, to accompany the more formal despatch of Lord Burghley. Thus it ran "Ned!—
"Though you have some tainted sheep among your flock, let not that serve for excuse for the rest. We trust you are so carefully regarded as nought shall be left for your excuses, but either ye lack heart or want will; for of fear we will not make mention, as that our soul abhors, and we assure ourselves you will never discern suspicion of it. Now or never let for the honour of us and our nation, each man be so much of bolder heart as their cause is good, and their honour must be according, remembering the old goodness of our God, who never yet made us fail His needful help, who ever bless you as I with my prince's hand beseech Him."
The warnings and preparations proved sufficiently effective, and the great schemes with which the new royal governor of the Netherlands was supposed to be full—a mere episode in which was the conquest of Ostend—seemed not so formidable as their shadows had indicated. There was, in the not very distant future, to be a siege of Ostend, which the world would not soon forget, but perhaps the place would not yield to a sudden assault. Its resistance, on the contrary, might prove more protracted than was then thought possible. But the chronicle of events must not be anticipated. For the present, Ostend was safe.
Early in the following spring, Verdugo again appeared before Coeworden in force. It was obvious that the great city of Groningen, the mistress of all the north-eastern provinces, would soon be attacked, and Coeworden was the necessary base of any operations against the place. Fortunately for the States, William Lewis had in the preceding autumn occupied and fortified the only avenue through the Bourtange morass, so that when Verdugo sat down before Coeworden, it was possible for Maurice, by moving rapidly, to take the royal governor at a disadvantage.
Verdugo had eight thousand picked troops, including two thousand Walloon cavalry, troopers who must have been very formidable, if they were to be judged by the prowess of one of their captains, Gaucier by name. This obedient Netherlander was in the habit of boasting that he had slain four hundred and ten men with his own hand, including several prisoners and three preachers; but the rest of those warriors were not so famed for their martial achievements.
The peril, however, was great, and Prince Maurice, trifling not a moment, threw himself with twelve thousand infantry, Germans, Frisians, Scotch, English, and Hollanders, and nearly two thousand horse, at once upon the road between the Vecht and the Bourtange morass. On the 6th of May, Verdugo found the States' commander-in-chief trenched and impregnable, squarely established upon his line of communications. He reconnoitred, called a council of war, and decided that to assail him were madness; to remain, destruction. On the night of the 6th of May, he broke up his camp and stole away in the darkness, without sound of drum or trumpet, leaving all his fortifications and burning all his huts.
Thus had Maurice, after showing the world how strong places were to be reduced, given a striking exhibition of the manner in which they were to be saved.
Coeworden, after thirty-one weeks' investment, was relieved.
The stadholder now marched upon Groningen. This city was one of the most splendid and opulent of all the Netherland towns. Certainly it should have been one of the most ancient in Europe, since it derived its name—according to that pains-taking banker, Francis Guicciardini—"from Grun, a Trojan gentleman," who, nevertheless, according to Munster, was "a Frenchman by birth."—"Both theories, however, might be true," added the conscientious Florentine, "as the French have always claimed to be descended from the relics of Troy." A simpler-minded antiquary might have babbled of green fields, since 'groenighe,' or greenness, was a sufficiently natural appellation for a town surrounded as was Groningen on the east and west by the greenest and fattest of pastures. In population it was only exceeded by Antwerp and Amsterdam. Situate on the line where upper and nether Germany blend into one, the capital of a great province whose very name was synonymous with liberty, and whose hardy sons had clone fierce battle with despotism in every age, so long as there had been human record of despotism and of battles, Groningen had fallen into the hands of the foreign foe, not through the prowess of the Spaniard but the treason of the Netherlander. The baseness of the brilliant, trusted, valiant, treacherous young Renneberg has been recorded on a previous page of these volumes. For thirteen years long the republic had chafed at this acquisition of the hated enemy within its very heart. And now the day had come when a blow should be struck for its deliverance by the ablest soldier that had ever shown himself in those regions, one whom the commonwealth had watched over from his cradle.
For in Groningen there was still a considerable party in favour of the Union, although the treason of Renneberg had hitherto prevented both city and province from incorporating themselves in the body politic of the United Netherlands. Within the precincts were five hundred of Verdugo's veterans under George Lanckema, stationed at a faubourg called Schuytendiess. In the city there was, properly speaking, no garrison, for the citizens in the last few years had come to value themselves on their fidelity to church and king, and to take a sorry pride in being false to all that was noble in their past. Their ancestors had wrested privilege after privilege at the sword's point from the mailed hands of dukes and emperors, until they were almost a self-governing republic; their courts of justice recognizing no appeal to higher powers, even under the despotic sway of Charles V. And now, under the reign of his son, and in the feebler days of that reign, the capital of the free Frisians—the men whom their ancient pagan statutes had once declared to be "free so long as the wind blew out of the clouds"—relied upon the trained bands of her burghers enured to arms and well-provided with all munitions of war to protect her, not against foreign tyranny nor domestic sedition, but against liberty and against law.
For the representative of the most ancient of the princely houses of Europe, a youth whose ancestors had been emperors when the forefathers of Philip, long-descended as he was, were but country squires, was now knocking at their gates. Not as a conqueror and a despot, but as the elected first magistrate and commander-in-chief of the freest commonwealth in the world, Maurice of Nassau, at the head of fifteen thousand Netherlanders, countrymen of their own, now summoned the inhabitants of the town and province to participate with their fellow citizens in all the privileges and duties of the prosperous republic.
It seemed impossible that such an appeal could be resisted by force of arms. Rather it would seem that the very walls should have fallen at his feet at the first blast of the trumpet; but there was military honour, there was religious hatred, there was the obstinacy of party. More than all, there were half a dozen Jesuits within the town, and to those ablest of generals in times of civil war it was mainly owing that the siege of Groningen was protracted longer than under other circumstances would have been possible.
It is not my purpose to describe in detail the scientific operations during the sixty-five days between the 20th May and the 24th July. Again the commander-in-chief enlightened the world by an exhibition of a more artistic and humane style of warfare than previously to his appearance on the military stage had been known. But the daily phenomena of the Leaguer—although they have been minutely preserved by most competent eyewitnesses—are hardly entitled to a place except in special military histories where, however, they should claim the foremost rank.
The fortifications of the city were of the most splendid and substantial character known to the age. The ditches, the ravelins, the curtains, the towers were as thoroughly constructed as the defences of any place in Europe. It was therefore necessary that Maurice and his cousin Lewis should employ all their learning, all their skill, and their best artillery to reduce this great capital of the Eastern Netherlands. Again the scientific coil of approaches wound itself around and around the doomed stronghold; again were constructed the galleries, the covered ways, the hidden mines, where soldiers, transformed to gnomes, burrowed and fought within the bowels of the earth; again that fatal letter Y advanced slowly under ground, stretching its deadly prongs nearer and nearer up to the walls; and again the system of defences against a relieving force was so perfectly established that Verdugo or Mansfield, with what troops they could muster, seemed as powerless as the pewter soldiers with which Maurice in his boyhood—not yet so long passed away—was wont to puzzle over the problems which now practically engaged his early manhood. Again, too, strangely enough, it is recorded that Philip Nassau, at almost the same period of the siege as in that of Gertruydenberg, signalized himself by a deed of drunken and superfluous daring. This time the dinner party was at the quarters of Count Solms, in honour of the Prince of Anhalt, where, after potations pottle deep, Count Philip rushed from the dinner-table to the breach, not yet thoroughly practicable, of the north ravelin, and, entirely without armour, mounted pike in hand to the assault, proposing to carry the fort by his own unaided exertions. Another officer, one Captain Vaillant, still more beside himself than was the count, inspired him to these deeds of valour by assuring him that the mine was to be sprung under the ravelin that afternoon, and that it was a plot on the part of the Holland boatmen to prevent the soldiers who had been working so hard and so long in the mines from taking part in the honours of the assault. The count was with difficulty brought off with a whole skin and put to bed. Yet despite these disgraceful pranks there is no doubt that a better and braver officer than he was hardly to be found even among the ten noble Nassaus who at that moment were fighting for the cause of Dutch liberty—fortunately with more sobriety than he at all times displayed. On the following day, Prince Maurice, making a reconnoissance of the works with his usual calmness, yet with the habitual contempt of personal danger which made so singular a contrast with the cautious and painstaking characteristics of his strategy, very narrowly escaped death. A shot from the fort struck so hard upon the buckler under cover of which he was taking his observations as to fell him to the ground. Sir Francis Vere, who was with the prince under the same buckler, likewise measured his length in the trench, but both escaped serious injury.
Pauli, one of the States commissioners present in the camp, wrote to Barneveld that it was to be hoped that the accident might prove a warning to his Excellency. He had repeatedly remonstrated with him, he said, against his reckless exposure of himself to unnecessary danger, but he was so energetic and so full of courage that it was impossible to restrain him from being everywhere every day.
Three days later, the letter Y did its work. At ten o'clock 15 July, of the night of the 15th July, Prince Maurice ordered the mines to be sprung, when the north ravelin was blown into the air, and some forty of the garrison with it. Two of them came flying into the besiegers' camp, and, strange to say, one was alive and sound. The catastrophe finished the sixty-five days' siege, the breach was no longer defensible, the obstinacy of the burghers was exhausted, and capitulation followed. In truth, there had been a subterranean intrigue going on for many weeks, which was almost as effective as the mine. A certain Jan to Boer had been going back and forth between camp and city, under various pretexts and safe-conducts, and it had at last appeared that the Jesuits and the five hundred of Verdugo's veterans were all that prevented Groningen from returning to the Union. There had been severe fighting within the city itself, for the Jesuits had procured the transfer of the veterans from the faubourg to the town itself, and the result of all these operations, political, military, and jesuitical, was that on 22nd July articles of surrender were finally agreed upon between Maurice and a deputation from the magistrates, the guilds, and commander Lanckema.
The city was to take its place thenceforth as a member of the Union. William Lewis, already stadholder of Friesland for the united States, was to be recognised as chief magistrate of the whole province, which was thus to retain all its ancient privileges, laws, and rights of self-government, while it exchanged its dependence on a distant, foreign, and decaying despotism for incorporation with a young and vigorous commonwealth.
It was arranged that no religion but the reformed religion, as then practised in the united republic, should be publicly exercised in the province, but that no man should be questioned as to his faith, or troubled in his conscience: Cloisters and ecclesiastical property were to remain 'in statu quo,' until the States-General should come to a definite conclusion on these subjects.
Universal amnesty was proclaimed for all offences and quarrels. Every citizen or resident foreigner was free to remain in or to retire from the town or province, with full protection to his person and property, and it was expressly provided in the articles granted to Lanckema that his soldiers should depart with arms and baggage, leaving to Prince Maurice their colours only, while the prince furnished sufficient transportation for their women and their wounded. The property of Verdugo, royal stadholder of the province, was to be respected, and to remain in the city, or to be taken thence under safe conduct, as might be preferred.
Ten thousand cannon-shot had been fired against the city. The cost of powder and shot consumed was estimated at a hundred thousand florins. Four hundred of the besiegers had been killed, and a much larger number wounded. The army had been further weakened by sickness and numerous desertions. Of the besieged, three hundred soldiers in all were killed, and a few citizens.
Thirty-six cannon were taken, besides mortars, and it was said that eight hundred tons of powder, and plenty of other ammunition and provisions were found in the place.
On the 23rd July Maurice and William Lewis entered the city. Some of the soldiers were disappointed at the inexorable prohibition of pillage; but it was the purpose of Maurice, as of the States-General, to place the sister province at once in the unsullied possession of the liberty and the order for which the struggle with Spain had, been carried on so long. If the limitation of public religious worship seemed harsh, it should be remembered that Romanism in a city occupied by Spanish troops had come to mean unmitigated hostility to the republic. In the midst of civil war, the hour for that religious liberty which was the necessary issue of the great conflict had not yet struck. It was surely something gained for humanity that no man should be questioned at all as to his creed in countries where it was so recently the time-honoured practice to question him on the rack, and to burn him if the answer was objectionable to the inquirer.
It was something that the holy Inquisition had been for ever suppressed in the land. It must be admitted, likewise, that the terms of surrender and the spectacle of re-established law and order which succeeded the capture of Groningen furnished a wholesome contrast to the scenes of ineffable horror that had been displayed whenever a Dutch town had fallen into the hands of Philip.
And thus the commonwealth of the United Netherlands, through the practical military genius and perseverance of Maurice and Lewis William, and the substantial statesmanship of Barneveld and his colleagues, had at last rounded itself into definite shape; while in all directions toward which men turned their eyes, world-empire, imposing and gorgeous as it had seemed for an interval, was vanishing before its votaries like a mirage. The republic, placed on the solid foundations of civil liberty, self-government, and reasonable law, was steadily consolidating itself.
No very prominent movements were undertaken by the forces of the Union during the remainder of the year. According to the agreements with Henry IV. it had been necessary to provide that monarch with considerable assistance to carry on his new campaigns, and it was therefore difficult for Maurice to begin for the moment upon the larger schemes which he had contemplated.
Meantime the condition of the obedient Netherlands demands a hasty glance.
On the death of brother Alexander the Capuchin, Fuentes produced a patent by which Peter Ernest Mansfeld was provisionally appointed governor, in case the post should become vacant. During the year which followed, that testy old campaigner had indulged himself in many petty feuds with all around him, but had effected, as we have seen, very little to maintain the king's authority either in the obedient or disobedient provinces.
His utter incompetency soon became most painfully apparent. His more than puerile dependence upon his son, and the more than paternal severity exercised over him by Count Charles, were made manifest to all the world. The son ruled the trembling but peevish old warrior with an iron rod, and endless was their wrangling with Fuentes and all the other Spaniards. Between the querulousness of the one and the ferocity of the other, poor Fuentes became sick of his life.
"'Tis a diabolical genius, this count Charles," said Ybarra, "and so full of ambition that he insists on governing everybody just as he rules his father. As for me, until the archduke comes I am a fish out of water."
The true successor to Farnese was to be, the Archduke Ernest, one of the many candidates for the hand of the Infanta, and for the throne of that department of the Spanish dominions which was commonly called France. Should Philip not appropriate the throne without further scruple, in person, it was on the, whole decided that his favorite nephew should be the satrap of that outlying district of the Spanish empire. In such case obedient France might be annexed to obedient Netherlands, and united under the sway of Archduke Ernest.
But these dreams had proved in the cold air of reality but midsummer madness. When the name of the archduke was presented to the estates as King Ernest I. of France, even the most unscrupulous and impassioned Leaguers of that country fairly hung their heads. That a foreign prince, whose very name had never been before heard of by the vast bulk of the French population, should be deliberately placed upon the throne of St. Louis and Hugh Capet, was a humiliation hard to defend, profusely as Philip had scattered the Peruvian and Mexican dollars among the great ones of the nation, in order to accomplish his purpose.