FOR two months the citizens manned their walls, and with stern courage kept at bay the beleaguering host, now risen from 10,000 to three times that number. At the end of this period provisions failed them. For some days the besieged subsisted on malt-cake, and when that was consumed they had recourse to the flesh of dogs and horses. Numbers died of starvation, and others sickened and perished through the unnatural food on which the famine had thrown them. Meanwhile a greater calamity even than would have been the loss of Leyden seemed about to overtake them.

Struck down by fever, the result of ceaseless toil and the most exhausting anxiety, William of Orange lay apparently at the point of death. The The illness of the prince was carefully concealed, lest the citizens of Leyden should give themselves up altogether t despair. Before lying down, the prince had arranged the only plan by which, as it appeared to him, it was possible to drive out the Spaniards and raise the siege; and in spite of his illness he issued from his sick-bed continual orders respecting the execution of that project. No force at his disposal was sufficient to enable him to break through the Spanish lines, and throw provisions into the starving city, in which the suffering and misery had now risen to an extreme pitch. In this desperate strait he thought of having recourse to a more terrible weapon than cannon or armies. He would summon the ocean against the Spaniards. He would cut the dykes and sink the country beneath the sea. The loss would be tremendous; many a rich meadow, many a fruitful orchard, and many a lovely villa would be drowned beneath the waves; but the loss, though great, would be recoverable: the waves would again restore what they had swallowed up; whereas, should the country be overwhelmed by the power of Spain, never again would it be restored: the loss would be eternal. What the genius and patriotism of William had dared, his eloquence prevailed upon the States to adopt. Putting their spades into the great dyke that shielded their land, they said, "Better a drowned

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country than a lost country." Besides the outer and taller rampart, within which the Hollanders had sought safety from their enemy the sea, there rose concentric lines of inner and lower dykes, all of which had to be cut through before the waves could flow over the country. The work was executed with equal alacrity and perseverance, but not with the desired result. A passage had been dug for the waters, but that ocean which had appeared but too ready to overwhelm its barriers when the inhabitants sought to keep it out, seemed now unwilling to overflow their country, as if it were in league with the tyrant from whose fury the Dutch besought it to cover them. Strong north-easterly winds, prevailing that year longer than usual, beat back the tides, and lowering the level of the German Sea, prevented the ingress of the waters. The flood lay only a few inches in depth on the face of Holland; and unless it should rise much higher, William's plan for relieving Leyden would, after all, prove abortive. At great labour and expense he had constructed a flotilla of 200 flat-bottomed vessels at Rotterdam and Delft; these he had mounted with guns, and manned with 800 Zealanders, and stored with provisions to be thrown into the faminestricken city, so soon as the depth of water, now slowly rising over meadow and corn-field, should enable his ships to reach its gates. But the flotilla lay immovable. The expedition was committed to Admiral Boisot; the crews were selected from the fleet of Zealand, picked veterans, with faces hacked and scarred with wounds which they had received in their former battles with the Spaniards; and to add to their ferocious looks they wore the Crescent in their caps, with the motto, "Turks rather than Spaniards." Ships, soldiers, and victuals-all had William provided; but unless the ocean should co-operate all had been provided in vain.

Something like panic seized on the besiegers when they beheld this new and terrible power advancing to assail them. Danger and death in every conceivable form they had been used

to mect, but they never dreamt of having to confront the ocean. Against such an enemy what could their or any human power avail? But when they saw that the rise of the waters was stayed, their alarm subsided, and they began to jeer and mock at the stratagem of the prince, which was meant to be grand, but had proved contemptible. He had summoned the ocean to his aid, but the ocean would not come. In the city of Leyden despondency had taken the place of elation. When informed of the expedient of the prince for their deliverance they had rung their bells for very joy ; but when they saw the ships, laden with that bread for lack of which some six or eight thousand of their number had already died, after entering the gaps in the outer dyke, arrested in their progress to their gates, hope again forsook them. Daily they climbed the steeples and towers, and scanned with anxious eyes the expanse around, if haply the ocean was coming to their aid. Day after day they had to descend with the same depressing report: the wind was still adverse; the waters refused to rise, and the ships could not float. The starvation and misery of Leyden was greater even than that which Haarlem had endured. For seven weeks there had not been a morsel of bread within the city. The vilest substitutes were greedily devoured; and even these were now almost exhausted. To complete their suffering, pestilence was added to famine. Already reduced to skeletons, hundreds had no strength to withstand this new attack. Men and women every hour dropped dead on the streets. Whole families were found to be corpses when the doors of their houses were forced open in the morning, and the survivors had hardly enough strength left to bury them. The dead were carried to their graves by those who to-morrow would need the same office at the hands of others. Amid the awful reiteration of these dismal scenes, one passion still survived-resistance to the Spaniards. Some few there were, utterly broken down under this accumulation of sorrows, who did indeed whisper the word "surrender," deeming that even Spanish soldiers could inflict nothing more terrible than they were already enduring. But these proposals were instantly and indignantly silenced by the great body of the citizens, to whom neither famine, nor pestilence, nor death appeared so dreadful as the entrance of the Spaniards. The citizens anew exchanged vows of fidelity with one another and with the magistrates, and anew ratified their oaths to that Power for whose truth they were in arms. Abandoned outside its walls, as it seemed, by all: pressed within by a host of terrible evils: succour neither in heaven nor on the earth, Leyden never

theless would hold fast its religion and its liberty, and if it must perish, it would perish free. It was the victory of a sublime faith over despair.

At last heaven heard the cry of the suffering city, and issued its fiat to the ocean. On the 1st of October, the equinoctial gales, so long delayed, gave signs of their immediate approach. On that night a strong wind sprung up from the north-west, and the waters of the rivers were forced back into their channels. After blowing for some hours from that quarter, the gale shifted into the south-west with increased fury. The strength of the winds heaped up the waters of the German Ocean upon the coast of Holland; the deep lifted up itself; its dark flood driven before the tempest's breath with mighty roar, like shout of giant loosed from his fetters and rushing to assail the foe, came surging onwards, and poured its tumultuous billows over the broken dykes. At midnight on the 2nd of October the flotilla of Boisot was afloat, and under weigh for Leyden, on whose walls crowds of gaunt, famished, almost exanimate men waited its coming. At every short distance the course of the ships was disputed by some half-submerged Spanish fort, whose occupants were not so much awed by the terrors of the deep which had risen to overwhelm them as to be unable to offer battle. But it was in vain. Boisot's fierce Zealanders were eager to grapple with the hated Spaniards; the blaze of cannon lighted up the darkness of that awful night, and the booming of artillery, rising above the voice of the tempest, told the citizens of Leyden that the patriot fleet was on its way to their rescue. These naval engage ments, on what but a few days before had been cornland or woodland, but was now ocean-a waste of water blackened by the scowl of tempest and the darkness of night-formed a novel as well as awful sight. The Spaniards fought with a desperate bravery, but everywhere without success. The Zealanders leaped from their flat-bottomed vessels and pursued them along the dykes, they fired on them from their boats, or, seizing them with hooks fixed to the ends of long poles, dragged them down from the causeway, and put them to the sword. Those who escaped the daggers and harpoons of the Zealanders, were drowned in the sea, or stuck fast in the mud till overtaken and dispatched. In that flight some 1,500 Spaniards perished.

Boisot's fleet had now advanced within two miles of the walls of Leyden, but here, at about a mile's distance from the gates, rose the strongest of all the Spanish forts, called Lammen, blocking up the way, and threatening to render all that had been gained without avail. The admiral reconnoitred it; it stood high above the water; it was of great

citizens assailing it on one side, and the flotilla bombarding it on the other. Night again fell, and seldom has blacker night descended on more tragic scene, or the gloom of nature been more in unison with the anxiety and distress of man. At midnight a terrible crash was heard. What that ominous sound, so awful in the stillness of the night, could be, no one could conjecture. A little after came a strange apparition, equally inexplicable. A line of lights was seen to issue from Lammen and move over the face of the deep. The darkness gave terror and mystery to every occurrence. All waited for the coming of day to explain these appearances. At last the dawn broke; it was now seen that a

was this morning to be opened against the formidable Lammen, the fleet of Boisot sailed under the silent guns of the now evacuated fort, and entered the city gates. On the morning of the 3rd of October, Leyden was relieved.

The citizens felt that their first duty was to offer thanks to that Power to whom exclusively they owed their deliverance. Despite their own heroism and Boisot's valour they would have fallen, had not God, by a mighty wind, brought up the ocean and overwhelmed their foes. A touching procession of haggard but heroic forms, headed by Admiral Boisot and the magistrates, and followed by the Zealanders and sailors, walked to the great church,

and there united in solemn prayer. A hymn of thanksgiving was next raised, but of the multitude of voices by which its first notes were pealed forth, few were able to continue singing to the close. Tears choked their voices, and sobs were mingled with the music. Thoughts of the awful scenes through which they had passed, and of the many who had shared the conflict with them, but had not lived to join in the hymn of victory, rushed with overmastering force into their minds, and compelled them to mingle tears with their praises.

A letter was instantly dispatched to the Prince of Orange with the great news. He received it while he was at worship in one of the churches of Delft, and instantly handed it to the minister, to be read from the pulpit after sermon. That moment recompensed him for the toil and losses of

years; and his joy was heightened by the fact that a nation rejoiced with him. Soon thereafter, the States assembled, and a day of public thanksgiving was appointed.

This series of wonders was to be fittingly closed by yet another prodigy. The fair land of Holland lay drowned at the bottom of the sea. The whole vast plain from Rotterdam to Leyden was under water. What time, what labour and expense would it require to recover the country, and restore the fertility and beauty which had been so sorely marred! The very next day, the 4th of October, the wind shifted into the north-east, and blowing with great violence, the waters rapidly assuaged, and in a few days the land was bare again. He who had brought up the ocean upon Holland with his mighty hand rolled it back.

THE night of this great conflict was far from being at an end, but its darkest hour had now passed. With the check received by the Spanish Power before the walls of Leyden, the first streak of dawn may be said to have broken; but cloud and tempest long obscured the rising of Holland's day.

The country owed a debt of gratitude to that heroic little city which had immolated itself on the altar of the nation's religion and liberty, and before resuming the great contest, Holland must first mark in some signal way its sense of the service which Leyden had rendered it. The distinction awarded Leyden gave happy augury of the brilliant destinies awaiting that land in years to come. It was resolved to found a university within its walls. Immediate effect was given to this resolution. Though the Spaniard was still in the land, and the strain of armies and battles was upon William, a grand procession was organised on the 5th of February, 1575, at which symbolic figures, drawn through the streets in triumphal cars, were employed to represent the Divine form of Chris

tianity, followed by the fair train of the arts and sciences. The seminary thus inaugurated was richly endowed; men of the greatest learning were sought for to fill its chairs, their fame attracted crowds of students from many countries; and its printing presses began to send forth works which have instructed the men of two centuries. Thus had Leyden come up from the "sea's devouring depths" to be one of the lights of the world.1

There came now a brief pause in the conflict. The Emperor Maximilian, the mutual friend of Philip of Spain and William of Orange, deemed the moment opportune for mediating between the parties, and on the 3rd of March, 1575, a congress assembled at Breda with the view of devising a basis of peace. The prince gave his consent that the congress should meet, although he had not the slightest hope of fruit from its labours. On one condition alone could peace be established in Holland, and that condition, he knew, was one which Philip

1 Brandt, vol. i., pp. 312, 313.

would never grant, and which the States could never cease to demand—namely, the free and open profession of the Reformed religion. When the commissioners met it was seen that William had judged rightly in believing the religious difficulty to be insurmountable. Philip would agree to no peace unless the Roman Catholic religion were installed in sole and absolute dominancy, leaving professors of the Protestant faith to convert their estates and goods into money, and quit the country. In that case, replied the Protestants, duly grateful for the wonderful concessions of the Catholic king, there will hardly remain in Holland, after all the heretics shall have left it, enough men to keep the dykes in repair, and the country had better be given back to the ocean at once. The conference broke up without accomplishing anything, and the States, with William at their head, prepared to resume the contest, in the hope of conquering by their own perseverance and heroism what they despaired ever to obtain from the justice of Philip.

The war was renewed with increased exasperation on both sides. The opening of the campaign was signalised by the capture of a few small Dutch towns, followed by the usual horrors that attended the triumph of the Spanish arms. But Governor Requesens soon ceased to push his conquests in that direction, and turned his whole attention to Zealand, where Philip was exceedingly desirous of acquiring harbours, in order to the reception of a fleet which he was building in Spain. This led to the most brilliant of all the feats accomplished by the Spaniards in the war.

In the sea that washes the north-east of Zealand are situated three large islands-Tolen, Duyveland, and Schowen. Tolen, which lies nearest the mainland, was already in the hands of the Spaniards; and Requesens, on that account, was all the more desirous to gain possession of the other two. He had constructed a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats, and these would soon have made him master of the coveted islands; but he dared not launch them on these waters, seeing the estuaries of Zealand were swept by those patriot buccaneers whose bravery suffered no rivals on their own element. Requesens, in his great strait, bethought him of another expedient, but of such a nature that it might well seem madness to attempt it. The island of Duyveland was separated from Tolen, the foothold of the Spaniards, by a strait of about five miles in width; and Requesens learned from some traitor Zealanders that there ran a narrow flat of sand from shore to shore, on which at ebb-tide there was not more than a depth of from four to five feet of It was possible, therefore, though certainly

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extremely hazardous, to traverse this submarine ford. The governor, however, determined that his soldiers should attempt it. He assigned to 3,000 picked men the danger and the glory of the enterprise. At midnight, the 27th September, 1575, the host descended into the deep, Requesens himself witnessing its departure from the shore, "and with him a priest, praying for these poor souls to the Prince of the celestial militia, Christ Jesus."1 A few guides well acquainted with the ford led the way; Don Osorio d'Ulloa, a commander of distinguished courage, followed; after him came a regiment of Spaniards, then a body of Germans, and lastly a troop of Walloons, followed by 200 sappers and miners. The night was dark, with sheet-lightning, which bursting out at frequent intervals, shed a lurid gleam upon the face of the black waters. At times a moon, now in her fourth quarter, looked forth between the clouds upon this novel midnight march. The soldiers walked two and two; the water at times reached to their necks, and they had to hold their muskets above their head to prevent their being rendered useless. The path was SO narrow that a single step aside was fatal, and many sank to rise no more. Nor were the darkness and the treacherous waves the only dangers that beset them. The Zealand fleet hovered near, and when its crews discerned by the pale light of the moon and the fitful lightning that the Spaniards were crossing the firth in this mest extraordinary fashion, they drew their ships as close to the ford as the shallows would permit, and opened their guns upon them. Their fire did little harm, for the darkness made the aim uncertain. Not so, however, the harpoons and long hooks of the Zealanders; their throw caught, and numbers of the Spaniards were dragged down into the sea. Nevertheless, they pursued their dreadful path, now struggling with the waves, now fighting with their assailants, and at last, after a march of six hours, they approached the opposite shore, and with ranks greatly thinned, emerged from the deep.2

Wearied by their fight with the sea and with the enemy, the landing of the Spaniards might have been withstood, but accident or treachery gave them possession of the island. At the moment that they stepped upon the shore, the commander of the Zealanders, Charles van Boisot, fell by a shot-whether from one of his own men, or from the enemy, cannot now be determined. The incident caused a panic among the patriots. The

1 Strada, bk. viii., p. 11.

2 Bor, lib. viii., pp. 648-650. Strada, bk. viii., pp. 11,12.