History of the United Netherlands, 1605-07 | Page 6

becoming almost as bad as the king's own. The
inevitable consequence of the want of cash and credit followed. Mutiny,
for the first time in Spinola's administration, raised its head once more,
and stalked about defiant. Six hundred veterans marched to Breda, and
offered their services to Justinus of Nassau. The proposal was accepted.
Other bands, established their quarters in different places, chose their

Elettos and lesser officers, and enacted the scenes which have been so
often depicted in these pages. The splendid army of Spinola melted like
April snow. By the last week of October there hardly seemed a Catholic
army in the field. The commander-in-chief had scattered such
companies as could still be relied upon in the villages of the friendly
arch- episcopate of Cologne, and had obtained, not by murders and
blackmail-- according to the recent practice of the Admiral of Arragon,
at whose grim name the whole country-side still shuddered--but from
the friendship of the leading inhabitants and by honest loans, a
sufficient sum to put bread into the mouths of the troops still remaining
faithful to him.
The opportunity had at last arrived for the stadholder to strike a blow
before the season closed. Bankruptcy and mutiny had reduced his
enemy to impotence in the very season of his greatest probable success.
On the 24th October Maurice came before Lochem, which he
recaptured in five days. Next in the order of Spinola's victories was
Groll, which the stadholder at once besieged. He had almost fifteen
thousand infantry and three thousand horse. A career of brief triumph
before winter should close in upon those damping fields, seemed now
assured. But the rain, which during nearly the whole campaign had
been his potent ally, had of late been playing him false. The swollen
Yssel, during a brief period of dry weather, had sunk so low in certain
shallows as not to be navigable for his transports, and after his trains of
artillery and munitions had been dragged wearily overland as far as
Groll, the deluge had returned in such force, that physical necessity as
well as considerations of humanity compelled him to defer his
entrenching operations until the weather should moderate. As there
seemed no further danger to be apprehended from the broken, mutinous,
and dispersed forces of the enemy, the siege operations were conducted
in a leisurely manner. What was the astonishment, therefore, among the
soldiers, when a rumour flew about the camp in the early days of
November that the indomitable Spinola was again advancing upon
them! It was perfectly true. With extraordinary perseverance he had
gathered up six or seven thousand infantry and twelve companies of
horse--all the remnants of the splendid armies with which he had taken
the field at midsummer--and was now marching to the relief of Groll,
besieged as it was by a force at least doubly as numerous as his own. It

was represented to the stadholder, however, that an impassable morass
lay between him and the enemy, and that there would therefore be time
enough to complete his entrenchments before Spinola could put his
foolhardy attempt into execution. But the Catholic general, marching
faster than rumour itself, had crossed the impracticable swamp almost
before a spadeful of earth had been turned in the republican camp. His
advance was in sight even while the incredulous were sneering at the
absurdity of his supposed project. Informed by scouts of the weakest
point in the stadholder's extended lines, Spinola was directing himself
thither with beautiful precision. Maurice hastily contracted both his
wings, and concentrated himself in the village of Lebel. At last the
moment had come for a decisive struggle. There could be little doubt of
the result. All the advantage was with the republican army. The
Catholics had arrived in front of the enemy fatigued by forced marches
through quagmires, in horrible weather, over roads deemed impassable.
The States' troops were fresh, posted on ground of their own choosing,
and partially entrenched. To the astonishment, even to the horror of the
most eager portion of the army, the stadholder deliberately, and despite
the groans of his soldiers, refused the combat, and gave immediate
orders for raising the siege and abandoning the field.
On the 12th of November he broke up his camp and withdrew to a
village called Zelem. On the same day the marquis, having relieved the
city, without paying the expected price, retired in another direction, and
established what was left of his army in the province of Munster. The
campaign was closed. And thus the great war which had run its stormy
course for nearly forty years, dribbled out of existence, sinking away
that rainy November in the dismal fens of Zutphen. The long struggle
for independence had come, almost unperceived, to an end.
Peace had not arrived, but the