History of the United Netherlands, 1602-03 | Page 8

an immense Portuguese carrack richly laden and
powerfully armed, was met, attacked, and overpowered by the little
merchantmen with their usual audacity and skill. A magnificent booty
was equitably divided among the captors, the vanquished crew were set
safely on shore; and the Hollanders then pursued their home voyage
without further adventures.
The ambassadors; with an Arab interpreter, were duly presented to

Prince Maurice in the lines before the city of Grave. Certainly no more
favourable opportunity could have been offered them for contrasting
the reality of military power, science, national vigour; and wealth,
which made the republic eminent among the nations, with the fiction of
a horde of insignificant and bloodthirsty savages which her enemies
had made so familiar at the antipodes. Not only were the intrenchments
bastions, galleries, batteries, the discipline and equipment of the troops,
a miracle in the eyes of these newly arrived Oriental ambassadors, but
they had awakened the astonishment of Europe, already accustomed to
such spectacles. Evidently the amity of the stadholder and his
commonwealth was a jewel of price, and the King of Achim would
have been far more barbarous than he had ever deemed the Dutchmen
to be, had he not well heeded the lesson which he had sent so far to
learn.
The chief of the legation, Abdulzamar, died in Zeeland, and was buried
with honourable obsequies at Middleburg, a monument being raised to
his memory. The other envoys returned to Sumatra, fully determined to
maintain close relations with the republic.
There had been other visitors in Maurice's lines before Grave at about
the same period. Among others, Gaston Spinola, recently created by the
archduke Count of Bruay, had obtained permission to make a visit to a
wounded relative, then a captive in the republican camp, and was
hospitably entertained at the stadholder's table. Maurice, with soldierly
bluntness, ridiculed the floating batteries, the castles on wheels, the
sausages, and other newly-invented machines, employed before Ostend,
and characterized them as rather fit to catch birds with than to capture a
city, defended by mighty armies and fleets.
"If the archduke has set his heart upon it, he had far better try to buy
Ostend," he observed.
"What is your price?" asked the Italian; "will you take 200,000 ducats?"
"Certainly not less than a million and a half," was the reply; so highly
did Maurice rate the position and advantages of the city. He would
venture to prophesy, he added, that the siege of Ostend would last as
long as the siege of Troy.
"Ostend is no Troy," said Spinola with a courtly flourish, "although
there are certainly not wanting an Austrian Agamemnon, a Dutch
Hector, and an Italian Achilles." The last allusion was to the speaker's

namesake and kinsman, the Marquis Anibrose Spinola, of whom much
was to be heard in the world from that time forth.
Meantime, although so little progress had been made at Ostend,
Maurice had thoroughly done his work before Grave. On the 18th
September the place surrendered, after sixty days' siege, upon the terms
usually granted by the stadholder. The garrison was to go out with the
honours of war. Those of the inhabitants who wished to leave were to
leave; those who preferred staying were to stay; rendering due
allegiance to the republic, and abstaining in public from the rites of the
Roman Church, without being exposed, however, to any inquiries as to
their religious opinions, or any interference within their households.
The work went slowly on before Ostend. Much effect had been
produced, however, by the operations of the archduke's little naval
force. The galley of that day, although a child's toy as compared with
the wonders of naval architecture of our own time, was an effective
machine enough to harass fishing and coasting vessels in creeks and
estuaries, and along the shores of Holland and Zeeland during tranquil
weather.
The locomotive force of these vessels consisted of galley-slaves, in
which respect the Spaniards had an advantage over other nations; for
they had no scruples in putting prisoners of war into chains and upon
the benches of the rowers. Humanity--"the law of Christian piety," in
the words of the noble Grotius--forbade the Hollanders from reducing
their captives to such horrible slavery, and they were obliged to content
themselves with condemned criminals, and with the few other wretches
whom abject poverty and the impossibility of earning other wages
could induce to accept the service. And as in the maritime warfare of
our own day, the machinery--engines, wheels, and boilers--is the
especial aim of the enemy's artillery, so the chain-gang who rowed in
the waist of the galley, the living enginry, without which the vessel
became a useless tub, was as surely marked out for destruction
whenever a sea-fight took place.
The Hollanders did not very much favour this