History of the United Netherlands, 1602-03 | Page 2

should take the field as soon as the season
permitted. Where the men were to be levied, and whence the funds for
putting such formidable hosts in motion were to be derived, it was not
easy to say: "'Tis astonishing," said Lewis William, "that the evils
already suffered cannot open his eyes; but after all, 'tis no marvel. An
old and good colonel, as I hold him to be, must go to school before he
can become a general, and we must beware of committing any second
folly, govern ourselves according to our means and the art of war, and
leave the rest to God."
Prince Maurice, however; yielding as usual to the persuasions or
importunities of those less sagacious than himself; and being also much
influenced by the advice of the English queen and the French king,
after reviewing the most splendid army that even he had ever equipped
and set in the field, crossed the Waal at Nymegen, and the Meuse at
Mook, and then moving leisurely along Meuse--side by way of
Sambeck, Blitterswyck, and Maasyk, came past St. Truyden to the
neighbourhood of Thienen, in Brabant. Here he stood, in the heart of
the enemy's country, and within a day's march of Brussels. The
sanguine portion of his countrymen and the more easily alarmed of the
enemy already thought it would be an easy military promenade for the
stadholder to march through Brabant and Flanders to the coast, defeat
the Catholic forces before Ostend, raise the weary siege of that place,
dictate peace to the archduke, and return in triumph to the Hague,
before the end of the summer.
But the experienced Maurice too well knew the emptiness of such
dreams. He had a splendid army--eighteen thousand foot and five
thousand horse-- of which Lewis William commanded the battalia,
Vere the right, and Count Ernest the left, with a train of two thousand
baggage wagons, and a considerable force of sutlers and
camp-followers. He moved so deliberately, and with such excellent
discipline, that his two wings could with ease be expanded for
black-mail or forage over a considerable extent of country, and again
folded together in case of sudden military necessity. But he had no
intention of marching through Brussels, Ghent, and Bruges, to the
Flemish coast. His old antagonist, the Admiral of Arragon, lay near
Thienen in an entrenched camp, with a force of at least fifteen thousand
men, while the archduke, leaving Rivas in command before Ostend,

hovered in the neighbourhood of Brussels, with as many troops as
could be spared from the various Flemish garrisons, ready to support
the admiral.
But Maurice tempted the admiral in vain with the chances of a general
action. That warrior, remembering perhaps too distinctly his disasters at
Nieuport, or feeling conscious that his military genius was more fitly
displayed in burning towns and villages in neutral territory, robbing the
peasantry, plundering gentlemen's castles and murdering the proprietors,
than it was like to be in a pitched battle with the first general of the age,
remained sullenly within his entrenchments. His position was too
strong and his force far too numerous to warrant an attack by the
stadholder upon his works. After satisfying himself, therefore, that
there was no chance of an encounter in Brabant except at immense
disadvantage, Maurice rapidly counter-marched towards the lower
Meuse, and on the 18th July laid siege to Grave. The position and
importance of this city have been thoroughly set before the reader in a
former volumes It is only necessary, therefore, to recal the fact that,
besides being a vital possession for the republic, the place was in law
the private property of the Orange family, having been a portion of the
estate of Count de Buren, afterwards redeemed on payment of a
considerable sum of money by his son-in-law, William the Silent,
confirmed to him at the pacification of Ghent, and only lost to his
children by the disgraceful conduct of Captain Hamart, which had cost
that officer his head. Maurice was determined at least that the place
should not now slip through his fingers, and that the present siege
should be a masterpiece. His forts, of which he had nearly fifty, were
each regularly furnished with moat, drawbridge, and bulwark. His
counterscarp and parapet, his galleries, covered ways and mines, were
as elaborate, massive, and artistically finished as if he were building a
city instead of besieging one. Buzanval, the French envoy, amazed at
the spectacle, protested that his works "were rather worthy of the grand
Emperor of the Turks than of, a little commonwealth, which only
existed through the disorder of its enemies and the assistance of its
friends;" but he admitted the utility of the stadholder's proceedings to
be very obvious.
While the prince calmly sat before Grave, awaiting