deserters, stole out of the Spanish Half-moon, which had been purposely almost denuded of its defenders, towards the enemy's entrenchments, and offered to lead a body of Spaniards into that ravelin. Bucquoy fell into the trap, so that the detachment, after a victory as easily effected as that in the southern forts, found themselves when the fight was over not the captors but the caught. A few attempted to escape and were driven into the sea; the rest were massacred.

Fifteen hundred of the enemy's dead were counted and registered by Auditor Fleming.65 The whole number of the slain and drowned was reckoned as high as two thousand, which was at least a quarter of the whole besieging army. And so ended this winter night's assault, by which the archduke had fondly hoped to avenge himself for Vere's perfidy, and to terminate the war at a blow. Only sixty of the garrison were killed, and Sir Horace Vere was wounded.66

The winter now set in with severe sleet, and snow, and rain, and furious tempests lashing the sea over the works of besieger and besieged, and for weeks together paralyzing all efforts of either army. Eight weary months the siege had lasted; the men in town and hostile camp, exposed to the inclemency of the wintry trenches, sinking faster before the pestilence which now swept impartially through all ranks than the soldiers of the archduke had fallen at Nieuport, or in the recent assault on the Sand Hill. Of seven thousand hardly three thousand now remained in the garrison.67

Yet still the weary sausage making and wooden castle building went on along the Gullet and around the old town. The Bredené dyke crept on inch by inch, but the steady ships of the republic came and went unharmed by the batteries with which Bucquoy hoped to shut up the New Harbour. The archduke's works were pushed up nearer on the west, but, as yet, not one practical advantage had been gained, and the siege had scarcely advanced a hair's breadth

65 Fleming, 197.

66 Ibid. 187-199. Compare Benti

| voglio, Grotius, Meteren, Wagenaar, 67 Grotius, xi. 590.

ubi sup.

1602.

SLOW PROGRESS OF THE SIEGE.

93

since the 5th of July of the preceding year, when the armies had first sat down before the place.

The stormy month of March had come, and Vere, being called to service in the field for the coming season, transferred the command at Ostend to Frederic van Dorp, a rugged, hard-headed, ill-favoured, stout-hearted Zeeland colonel, with the face of a bull-dog, and with the tenacious grip of one.

68

65 Fleming, 212, 215.

CHAPTER XL.

Prince

Protraction of the siege of Ostend - Spanish invasion of Ireland Maurice again on the march-Siege of Grave-State of the archduke's army-Formidable mutiny. State of Europe - Portuguese expedition to Java Foundation there of the first Batavian trading settlementExploits of Jacob Heemskerk - Capture of a Lisbon carrack - Progress of Dutch commerce Oriental and Germanic republics - Commercial embassy from the King of Atsgen in Sumatra to the Netherlands - Surrender of Grave Privateer work of Frederic Spinola Destruction of Spinola's fleet by English and Dutch cruisers - Continuation of the siege of Ostend - Fearful hurricane and its effects -The attack Capture of external forts Encounter between Spinola and a Dutch squadron-Execution of prisoners by the archduke - Philip Fleming and his diary - Continuation of operations before Ostend - Spanish veterans still mutinous - Their capital besieged by Van den Berg - Maurice marches to their relief — Convention between the prince and the mutineers Great commercial progress of the Dutch-Opposition to international commerce- Organization of the Universal East India Company.

IT would be desirable to concentrate the chief events of the siege of Ostend so that they might be presented to the reader's view in a single mass. But this is impossible. The siege was essentially the war-as already observed—and it was bidding fair to protract itself to such an extent that a respect for chronology requires the attention to be directed for a moment to other topics.

The invasion of Ireland under Aquila, so pompously heralded as almost to suggest another grand armada, had sailed in the beginning of the winter, and an army of six thousand men had been landed at Kinsale. Rarely had there been a better opportunity for the Celt to strike for his independence. Shane Mac Neil had an army on foot with which he felt confident of exterminating the Saxon oppressor, even without the assistance of his peninsular allies, while the queen's army, severely drawn upon as it had been for the exigencies of Vere and the States, might be supposed unable

1602.

INVASION OF IRELAND.

95

to cope with so formidable a combination. Yet Montjoy made short work of Aquila and Tyrone. The invaders, shut up in their meagre conquest, became the besieged instead of the assailants. Tyrone made a feeble attempt to relieve his Spanish allies, but was soon driven into his swamps, the peasants would not rise, in spite of proclamations and golden mountains of promise, and Aquila was soon glad enough to sign a capitulation by which he saved a portion of his army. He then returned, in transports provided by the January, English general, a much discomfited man, to Spain, instead of converting Ireland into a province of the universal empire.' He had not rescued Hibernia, as he stoutly proclaimed at the outset his intention of doing, from the jaws of the evil demon.2

1602.

The States, not much wiser after the experience of Nieuport, were again desirous that Maurice should march into Flanders, relieve Ostend, and sweep the archduke into the sea. As for Vere, he proposed that a great army of cavalry and infantry should be sent into Ostend, while another force equally powerful should take the field as soon as the season permitted. Where the men were to be levied, and whence the funds for putting such formidable hosts in motion were to be derived, it was not easy to say. ""Tis astonishing," said Lewis William, "that the evils already suffered cannot open his eyes; after all, 'tis no marvel. An old and good colonel, as I hold him to be, must go to school before he can become a general, and we must beware of committing any second folly, govern ourselves according to our means and the art of war, and leave the rest to God."

but

Prince Maurice, however, yielding as usual to the persuasions or importunities of those less sagacious than himself, and being also much influenced by the advice of the English queen and the French king, after reviewing the most splendid army that even he had ever equipped and set in 22 June, the field, crossed the Waal at Nymegen, and the 1602. 2 Grotius, ubi sup.

1 Meteren, 458, seqq. Grot. x. 593.

3 Groen v. Prinsterer. Archives, 2nd Series, ii. 111.

Meuse at Mook, and then, moving leisurely along Meuse-side by way of Sambeck, Blitterswyck, and Maasyk, came past St. Truyden to the neighbourhood of Thienen, in Brabant. Here he stood, in the heart of the enemy's country, and within a day's march of Brussels. The sanguine portion of his countrymen and the more easily alarmed of the enemy already thought it would be an easy military promenade for the stadholder to march through Brabant and Flanders to the coast, defeat the Catholic forces before Ostend, raise the weary siege of that place, dictate peace to the archduke, and return in triumph to the Hague, before the end of the summer.

But the experienced Maurice too well knew the emptiness of such dreams. He had a splendid army-eighteen thousand foot and five thousand horse-of which Lewis William commanded the battalia, Vere the right, and Count Ernest the left, with a train of two thousand baggage wagons, and a considerable force of sutlers and camp-followers. He moved so deliberately, and with such excellent discipline, that his two wings could with ease be expanded for black-mail or forage over a considerable extent of country, and again folded together in case of sudden military necessity. But he had no intention of marching through Brussels, Ghent, and Bruges, to the Flemish coast. His old antagonist, the Admiral of Arragon, lay near Thienen in an intrenched camp, with a force of at least fifteen thousand men, while the archduke, leaving Rivas in command before Ostend, hovered in the neighbourhood of Brussels, with as many troops as could be spared from the various Flemish garrisons, ready to support the admiral.5

But Maurice tempted the admiral in vain with the chances of a general action. That warrior, remembering perhaps too distinctly his disasters at Nieuport, or feeling conscious that his military genius was more fitly displayed in burning towns and villages in neutral territory, robbing the peasantry, plundering gentlemen's castles and murdering the

Meteren, 469, seqq. Van der Kemp, ii. 98, 99, and notes. Bentivoglio, P. III. 517. Wagenaar, ix. 119, seqq. 5 Same authorities.