History of the United Netherlands, 1594 | Page 7

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