History of the United Netherlands, 1590a | Page 7

countrymen.
Five companies of foot and one of horse-picked troops of Spain and
Italy--had surrendered a wealthy, populous town and a well-fortified
castle to a mud-scow, and had fled shrieking in dismay from the onset
of seventy frost-bitten Hollanders.
It was too late to save the town, but he could punish, as it deserved, the
pusillanimity of the garrison.
Three captains--one of them rejoicing in the martial name of Cesar
Guerra--were publicly beheaded in Brussels. A fourth, Ventimiglia,
was degraded but allowed to escape with life, on account of his near
relationship to the Duke of Terranova, while Governor Lanzavecchia

was obliged to resign the command of Gertruydenberg. The great
commander knew better than to encourage the yielding up of cities and
fortresses by a mistaken lenity to their unlucky defenders.
Prince Maurice sent off letters the same night announcing his success
to the States-General. Hohenlo wrote pithily to Olden-Barneveld--"The
castle and town of Breda are ours, without a single man dead on our
side. The garrison made no resistance but ran distracted out of the
town."
The church bells rang and bonfires blazed and cannon thundered in
every city in the United Provinces to commemorate this auspicious
event. Olden-Barneveld, too, whose part in arranging the scheme was
known to have been so valuable, received from the States-General a
magnificent gilded vase with sculptured representations of the various
scenes in the drama, and it is probable that not more unmingled
satisfaction had been caused by any one event of the war than by this
surprise of Breda.
The capture of a single town, not of first-rate importance either, would
hardly seem too merit so minute a description as has been given in the
preceding pages. But the event, with all its details, has been preserved
with singular vividness in Netherland story. As an example of daring,
patience, and complete success, it has served to encourage the bold
spirits of every generation and will always inspire emulation in
patriotic hearts of every age and clime, while, as the first of a series of
audacious enterprises by which Dutch victories were to take the place
of a long procession of Spanish triumphs on the blood-stained soil of
the provinces, it merits, from its chronological position, a more than
ordinary attention.
In the course of the summer Prince Maurice, carrying out into practice
the lessons which he had so steadily been pondering, reduced the towns
and strong places of Heyl, Flemert, Elshout, Crevecoeur, Hayden,
Steenberg, Rosendaal, and Osterhout. But his time, during the
remainder of the year 1590, was occupied with preparations for a
campaign on an extended scale and with certain foreign negotiations to
which it will soon be necessary to direct the reader's attention.

CHAPTER XXII

.
Struggle of the United Provinces against Philip of Spain--Progress of
the Republic--Influence of Geographical position on the fate of the
Netherlands--Contrast offered by America--Miserable state of the
so--called "obedient" provinces--Prosperity of the Commonwealth--Its
internal government--Tendency to provincialism--Quibbles of the
English Members of the Council, Wilkes and Bodley--Exclusion of
Olden-Barneveld from the State Council--Proposals of Philip for
mediation with the United Provinces--The Provinces resolutely decline
all proffers of intervention.
The United Provinces had now been engaged in unbroken civil war for
a quarter of a century. It is, however, inaccurate to designate this great
struggle with tyranny as a civil war. It was a war for independence,
maintained by almost the whole population of the United Provinces
against a foreigner, a despot, alien to their blood, ignorant of their
language, a hater of their race, a scorner of their religion, a trampler
upon their liberties, their laws, and institutions--a man who had
publicly declared that he would rather the whole nation were
exterminated than permitted to escape from subjection to the Church of
Rome. Liberty of speech, liberty of the press, liberty of thought on
political, religious, and social questions existed within those Dutch
pastures and Frisian swamps to a far greater degree than in any other
part of the world at that day; than in very many regions of Christendom
in our own time. Personal slavery was unknown. In a large portion of
their territory it had never existed. The free Frisians, nearest
blood-relations of, in this respect, the less favoured Anglo-Saxons, had
never bowed the knee to the feudal system, nor worn nor caused to be
worn the collar of the serf. In the battles for human liberty no nation
has stood with cleaner hands before the great tribunal, nor offered more
spotless examples of patriotism to be emulated in all succeeding ages,
than the Netherlanders in their gigantic struggle with Philip of Spain. It
was not a class struggling for their own privileges, but trampling on
their fellow-men in a lower scale of humanity. Kings and aristocrats
sneered at the vulgar republic where