History of the United Netherlands, 1590a | Page 6

a sentinel, hearing some movement in the
darkness.
"A friend," replied the captain, seizing him, by the throat, and
commanding him, if he valued his life, to keep silence except when
addressed and then to speak in a whisper.
"How many are there in the garrison?" muttered Heraugiere.
"Three hundred and fifty," whispered the sentinel.
"How many?" eagerly demanded the nearest followers, not hearing the
reply.
"He says there are but fifty of them," said Heraugiere, prudently
suppressing the three hundred, in order to encourage his comrades.
Quietly as they had made their approach, there was nevertheless a stir
in the guard-house. The captain of the watch sprang into the courtyard.

"Who goes there?" he demanded in his turn.
"A friend," again replied Heraugiere, striking him dead with a single
blow as he spoke.
Others emerged with torches. Heraugiere was slightly wounded, but
succeeded, after a brief struggle, in killing a second assailant. His
followers set upon the watch who retreated into the guard-house.
Heraugiere commanded his men to fire through the doors and windows,
and in a few minutes every one of the enemy lay dead.
It was not a moment for making prisoners or speaking of quarter.
Meantime Fervet and his band had not been idle. The magazine-house
of the castle was seized, its defenders slain. Young Lanzavecchia made
a sally from the palace, was wounded and driven back together with a
few of his adherents.
The rest of the garrison fled helter-skelter into the town. Never had the
musketeers of Italy--for they all belonged to Spinola's famous Sicilian
Legion--behaved so badly. They did not even take the precaution to
destroy the bridge between the castle and the town as they fled panic-
stricken before seventy Hollanders. Instead of encouraging the burghers
to their support they spread dismay, as they ran, through every street.
Young Lanzavecchia, penned into a corner of the castle; began to
parley; hoping for a rally before a surrender should be necessary. In the
midst of the negotiation and a couple of hours before dawn, Hohenlo;
duly apprised by the boatman, arrived with the vanguard of Maurice's
troops before the field-gate of the fort. A vain attempt was made to
force this portal open, but the winter's ice had fixed it fast. Hohenlo
was obliged to batter down the palisade near the water-gate and enter
by the same road through which the fatal turf-boat had passed.
Soon after he had marched into the town at the head of a strong
detachment, Prince Maurice himself arrived in great haste, attended by
Philip Nassau, the Admiral Justinus Nassau, Count Solms, Peter van
der Does, and Sir Francis Vere, and followed by another body of
picked troops; the musicians playing merrily that national air, then as
now so dear to Netherlanders--
"Wilhelmus van Nassouwen Ben ick van Duytaem bloed."
The fight was over. Some forty of the garrison had been killed, but not
a man of the attacking party. The burgomaster sent a trumpet to the
prince asking permission to come to the castle to arrange a capitulation;

and before sunrise, the city and fortress of Breda had surrendered to the
authority of the States-General and of his Excellency.
The terms were moderate. The plundering was commuted for the
payment of two months' wages to every soldier engaged in the affair.
Burghers who might prefer to leave the city were allowed to do so with
protection to life, and property. Those who were willing to remain loyal
citizens were not to be molested, in their consciences or their
households, in regard to religion. The public exercise of Catholic rites
was however suspended until the States-General should make some
universal provision on this subject.
Subsequently, it must be allowed, the bargain of commutation proved a
bad one for the burghers. Seventy men had in reality done the whole
work, but so many soldiers, belonging to the detachments who marched
in after the fortress had been taken, came forward to claim their
months' wages as to bring the whole amount required above one
hundred thousand florins. The Spaniards accordingly reproached Prince
Maurice with having fined his own patrimonial city more heavily than
Alexander Farnese had mulcted Antwerp, which had been made to pay
but four hundred thousand florins, a far less sum in proportion to the
wealth and importance of the place.
Already the Prince of Parma, in the taking of Breda, saw verified his
predictions of the disasters about to fall on the Spanish interests in the
Netherlands, by reason of Philip's obstinate determination to
concentrate all his energies on the invasion of France. Alexander had
been unable, in the midst of preparations for his French campaign, to
arrest this sudden capture, but his Italian blood was on fire at the
ignominy which had come upon the soldiership of his