History of the United Netherlands, 1600-09 | Page 5

completing his arrangements. Solms
was sent forward to seize the sconces and redoubts of the enemy

around Ostend, at Breedene, Snaaskerk, Plassendaal, and other points,
and especially to occupy the important fort called St. Albert, which was
in the downs at about a league from that city. All this work was
thoroughly accomplished; little or no resistance having been made to
the occupation of these various places. Meantime the States-General,
who at the special request of Maurice were to accompany the
expedition in order to observe the progress of events for which they
were entirely responsible, and to aid the army when necessary by their
advice and co-operation, had assembled to the number of thirteen in
Ostend. Solms having strengthened the garrison of that place then took
up his march along the beach to Nieuport. During the progress of the
army through Holland and Zeeland towards its place of embarkation
there had been nothing but dismal prognostics, with expressions of
muttered indignation, wherever the soldiers passed. It seemed to the
country people, and to the inhabitants of every town and village, that
their defenders were going to certain destruction; that the existence of
the commonwealth was hanging by a thread soon to be snapped
asunder. As the forces subsequently marched from the Sas of Ghent
towards the Flemish coast there was no rising of the people in their
favour, and although Maurice had issued distinct orders that the
peasantry were to be dealt with gently and justly, yet they found neither
peasants nor villagers to deal with at all. The whole population on their
line of march had betaken themselves to the woods, except the village
sexton of Jabbeke and his wife, who were too old to run. Lurking in the
thickets and marshes, the peasants fell upon all stragglers from the
army and murdered them without mercy--so difficult is it in times of
civil war to make human brains pervious to the light of reason. The
stadholder and his soldiers came to liberate their brethren of the same
race, and speaking the same language, from abject submission to a
foreign despotism. The Flemings had but to speak a word, to lift a
finger, and all the Netherlands, self-governed, would coalesce into one
independent confederation of States, strong enough to defy all the
despots of Europe. Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged
their chains, and preferred the tyranny under which their kindred had
been tortured, burned, and buried alive for half-a-century long, to the
possibility of a single Calvinistic conventicle being opened in any
village of obedient Flanders. So these excellent children of Philip and

the pope, whose language was as unintelligible to them as it was to
Peruvians or Iroquois, lay in wait for the men who spoke their own
mother tongue, and whose veins were filled with their own blood, and
murdered them, as a sacred act of duty. Retaliation followed as a matter
of course, so that the invasion of Flanders, in this early stage of its
progress, seemed not likely to call forth very fraternal feelings between
the two families of Netherlanders.
The army was in the main admirably well supplied, but there was a
deficiency of drink. The water as they advanced became brackish and
intolerably bad, and there was great difficulty in procuring any
substitute. At Male three cows were given for a pot of beer, and more
of that refreshment might have been sold at the same price, had there
been any sellers.
On the 30th June Maurice marched from Oudenburg, intending to
strike a point called Niewendam--a fort in the neighbourhood of
Nieuport--and so to march along the walls of that city and take up his
position immediately in its front. He found the ground, however, so
marshy and impracticable as he advanced, that he was obliged to
countermarch, and to spend that night on the downs between forts
Isabella and St. Albert.
On the 1st July he resumed his march, and passing a bridge over a
small stream at a place called Leffingen, laying down a road as he went
with sods and sand, and throwing bridges over streams and swamps, he
arrived in the forenoon before Nieuport. The, fleet had reached the
roadstead the same morning.
This was a strong, well-built, and well-fortified little city, situate
half-a-league from the sea coast on low, plashy ground. At high water it
was a seaport, for a stream or creek of very insignificant dimensions
was then sufficiently filled by the tide to admit vessels of considerable
burthen. This haven was immediately taken possession of by the
stadholder, and two-thirds of his army were thrown across to the
western side of the water, the troops remaining on the Ostend side
being by a change of arrangement now under command of Count
Ernest.
Thus the army