The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1572 | Page 5

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 entrance into Rammekens, whence the soldiery, about one- half of whom had thus been saved, were transferred at a very critical moment to Middelburg.
The great Lisbon fleet followed in the wake of the Biscayans, with