The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1572 | Page 5

organized and drilled, and the fortifications were put in order.
No attempt was made to force the reformed religion upon the
inhabitants, and even Catholics who were discovered in secret

correspondence with the enemy were treated with such extreme
gentleness by Nassau as to bring upon him severe reproaches from
many of his own party.
A large collection of ecclesiastical plate, jewellery, money, and other
valuables, which had been sent to the city for safe keeping from the
churches and convents of the provinces, was seized, and thus, with little
bloodshed and no violence; was the important city secured for the
insurgents. Three days afterwards, two thousand infantry, chiefly
French, arrived in the place. In the early part of the following month
Louis was still further strengthened by the arrival of thirteen hundred
foot and twelve hundred horsemen, under command of Count
Montgomery, the celebrated officer, whose spear at the tournament had
proved fatal to Henry the Second. Thus the Duke of Alva suddenly
found himself exposed to a tempest of revolution. One thunderbolt after
another seemed descending around him in breathless succession. Brill
and Flushing had been already lost; Middelburg was so closely invested
that its fall seemed imminent, and with it would go the whole island of
Walcheren, the key to all the Netherlands. In one morning he had heard
of the revolt of Enkbuizen and of the whole Waterland; two hours later
came the news of the Valenciennes rebellion, and next day the
astonishing capture of Mons. One disaster followed hard upon another.
He could have sworn that the detested Louis of Nassau, who had dealt
this last and most fatal stroke, was at that moment in Paris, safely
watched by government emissaries; and now he had, as it were,
suddenly started out of the earth, to deprive him of this important city,
and to lay bare the whole frontier to the treacherous attacks of faithless
France. He refused to believe the intelligence when it was first
announced to him, and swore that he had certain information that Count
Louis had been seen playing in the tennis- court at Paris, within so
short a period as to make his presence in Hainault at that moment
impossible. Forced, at last, to admit the truth of the disastrous news, he
dashed his hat upon the ground in a fury, uttering imprecations upon
the Queen Dowager of France, to whose perfidious intrigues he
ascribed the success of the enterprise, and pledging himself to send her
Spanish thistles, enough in return for the Florentine lilies which she had
thus bestowed upon him.
In the midst of the perplexities thus thickening around him, the Duke

preserved his courage, if not his temper. Blinded, for a brief season, by
the rapid attacks made upon him, he had been uncertain whither to
direct his vengeance. This last blow in so vital a quarter determined
him at once. He forthwith despatched Don Frederic to undertake the
siege of Mons, and earnestly set about raising large reinforcements to
his army. Don Frederic took possession, without much opposition, of
the Bethlehem cloister in the immediate vicinity of the city, and with
four thousand troops began the investment in due form.
Alva had, for a long time, been most impatient to retire from the
provinces. Even he was capable of human emotions. Through the
sevenfold panoply of his pride he had been pierced by the sharpness of
a nation's curse. He was wearied with the unceasing execrations which
assailed his ears. "The hatred which the people bear me," said he, in a
letter to Philip, "because of the chastisement which it has been
necessary for me to inflict, although with all the moderation in the
world, make all my efforts vain. A successor will meet more sympathy
and prove more useful." On the 10th June, the Duke of Medina Coeli;
with a fleet of more than forty sail, arrived off Blankenburg, intending
to enter the Scheld. Julian Romero, with two thousand Spaniards, was
also on board the fleet. Nothing, of course, was known to the new
comers of the altered condition of affairs in the Netherlands, nor of the
unwelcome reception which they were like to meet in Flushing. A few
of the lighter craft having been taken by the patriot cruisers, the alarm
was spread through all the fleet. Medina Coeli, with a few transports,
was enabled to effect his escape to Sluys, whence he hastened to
Brussels in a much less ceremonious manner than he had originally
contemplated. Twelve Biscayan ships stood out to sea, descried a large
Lisbon fleet, by a singular coincidence, suddenly heaving in sight,
changed their course again, and with a favoring breeze bore boldly up
the Hond; passed Flushing in spite of a severe cannonade from the forts,
and eventually made good their