History of the United Netherlands, 1594 | Page 5

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