From the Heroic Years of the Dutch

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Introduction

Events followed one another rapidly after the rising of the Netherlanders in 1566. The organization of the Gueux (“beggars”), the league of noblemen pledged to resist the introduction of the Inquisition into the Low Countries by Philip II of Spain, had shown itself prepared for extreme action in self-defense. The name Gueux, first used in contempt, was borne in honor by the patriots in the ensuing war, which Philip conducted as a “war of extermination.”

In 1567 the Duke of Alva, a famous veteran of the wars of Charles V and of Philip, was sent to the Netherlands as governor, where his cruelties soon made him notorious. He established the court known as the Council of Blood, which first sat in September, 1567. In less than three months this tribunal put to death eighteen hundred persons, including Horn, Egmont, and other eminent patriots. As many as one hundred thousand of the population are said to have emigrated at this time to England.

William of Orange, the great leader of the Netherlanders, refused to appear before the Council of Blood. He had resigned his offices, civil and military, and now retired to Dillenburg, still proclaiming his adhesion to the Protestant faith. But in 1568 he gathered two armies. Alva destroyed one of them, and the other was disbanded. In 1570 William issued letters of marque to seamen who were nicknamed “Sea Beggars,” and bore a prominent part in the war of independence. In 1572 they captured Briel. That year Mons was captured by Louis of Nassau, William’s brother, but in September it was retaken by Alva. In Dyer’s narrative the subsequent course of events, to the Pacification of Ghent, is clearly and succinctly traced.

This selection is by Thomas Henry Dyer.

Time: 1573
Place: South Holland

Soon after the capture of Mons, Alva went to Brussels and left the conduct of the war to his son, Frederick de Toledo. Zutphen and Naarden successively yielded to Frederick’s arms, and became the scenes of the most detestable violence. Alva ordered his son not to leave a single man alive in Zutphen, and to burn down all the houses–commands which were almost literally obeyed. The treatment of Naarden was still more revolting. The town had capitulated, and Don Julian Romero, an officer of Don Frederick’s, had pledged his word that the lives and property of the inhabitants should be respected. Romero then entered the town with some five hundred musketeers, for whom the citizens provided a sumptuous feast; and he summoned the inhabitants to assemble in the Gast Huis Church, then used as a town hall. More than five hundred of them had entered the church when a priest, suddenly rushing in, bade them prepare for death. Scarcely had the announcement been made when a band of Spanish soldiers entered and, after discharging a volley into the defenseless crowd, attacked them sword in hand. The church was then fired and the dead and dying consumed together.

But these cruelties only steeled the Hollanders to a more obstinate resistance; nor must it be concealed that in these plusquam civilia bella, where civil hatred was still further embittered by sectarian malignancy, the Dutch sometimes displayed as much savageness as their adversaries. Thus, during the struggle in Zealand, a surgeon at Veer cut out the heart of a Spanish prisoner, and, fixing it on the prow of a vessel, invited his fellow-townsmen to fix their teeth in it, an invitation with which many complied.

The war was continued during the winter (1572-1573). In December the Spaniards marched to attack a fleet frozen up near Amsterdam. It was defended by a body of Dutch musketeers on skates, who, by the superior skill of their evolutions, drove the enemy back and killed great numbers of them. In consequence of this extraordinary combat, Alva ordered seven thousand pairs of skates, and directed his soldiers to be instructed in their use. Siege was then laid to Haarlem, which town, warned by the fate of Zutphen and Naarden, made a defense that astonished all Europe. A corps of three hundred respectable women, armed with musket, sword, and dagger, and led by Kenan Hasselaer, a widow lady of distinguished family, about forty-seven years of age, enrolled themselves among its defenders, and partook in some of the most fiercely contested actions. Battles took place upon Haarlem Lake, on which the Prince of Orange had more than a hundred sail of various kinds; till at length Bossu, whose vessels were larger, though less numerous, entirely defeated the Hollanders, and swept the lake in triumph (May 28, 1573). The siege had lasted seven months, and Frederick de Toledo, who had lost a great part of his army by hunger, cold, and pestilence, was inclined to abandon the enterprise; but he was kept to it by the threats of his father, and on the 12th of July Haarlem surrendered. Don Frederick had written a letter solemnly assuring the besieged that no punishment should be inflicted except on those who deserved it in the opinion of the citizens themselves, yet he was in possession of strict orders from his father to put to death the whole garrison, except the Germans, and also to execute a large number of the inhabitants. Between two and three thousand were slaughtered; three hundred were drowned in the lake tied by twos back to back.

The resistance of Haarlem and other places determined Alva to try what might be done by an affectation of clemency; and on the 26th of July he issued a proclamation in which Philip was compared to a hen gathering its chickens under the parental wing. But in the same breath his subjects were admonished not to excite his rage, cruelty, and fury, and they were threatened that if his gracious offers of mercy were neglected, his majesty would strip bare and utterly depopulate the land and cause it to be again inhabited by strangers. So ludicrous a specimen of paternal love was not calculated to excite much confidence in the breasts of the Hollanders, and Alkmaar, the next town to which Don Frederick laid siege, though defended only by eight hundred soldiers and thirteen hundred citizens against sixteen thousand veterans, also resolved to hold out to the last extremity. Enraged at this contempt of what he called his clemency, at Haarlem, Alva resolved to make Alkmaar an example of his cruelty, and he wrote to Philip that everyone in it should be put to the sword. But the inhabitants made a heroic defense and repulsed the besiegers in many a bloody assault; till at length the superstitious Spaniards, believing that the place was defended by the devil, whom they thought that the Protestants worshipped, refused to mount to the attack, suffering themselves rather to be run through the body by their officers; and Don Frederick, finding from an intercepted letter that the Prince of Orange contemplated cutting the dikes and flooding the country, in order to prevent the place from being surrendered, raised the siege (October 8th) after it had lasted seven weeks.

Continued.

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