Part 2

Thus the consequences of the fatal event were even more deplorable than the loss of the city itself. The fury of Olden-Barneveld at the treason was excessive, and the great Advocate governed the policy of the republic, at this period, almost like a dictator. The States, easily acknowledging the sway of the imperious orator, became bitter--and wrathful with the English, side by side with whom they had lately been so cordially standing.

Willoughby, on his part, now at the English court, was furious with the States, and persuaded the leading counsellors of the Queen as well as her Majesty herself, to adopt his view of the transaction. Wingfield, it was asserted, was quite innocent in the matter; he was entirely ignorant of the French language, and therefore was unable to read a word of the letters addressed to him by Maurice and the replies which had been signed by himself. Whether this strange excuse ought to be accepted or not, it is quite certain that he was no traitor like York and Stanley, and no friend to Spain; for he had stipulated for himself the right to return to England, and had neither received nor desired any reward. He hated Maurice and he hated the States, but he asserted that he had been held in durance, that the garrison was mutinous, and that he was no more responsible for the loss of the city than Sir Francis Vere had been, who had also been present, and whose name had been subsequently withdrawn, in honourable fashion from the list of traitors, by authority of the States. His position--so far as he was personally concerned--seemed defensible, and the Queen was thoroughly convinced of his innocence. Willoughby complained that the republic was utterly in the hands of Barneveld, that no man ventured to lift his voice or his eyes in presence of the terrible Advocate who ruled every Netherlander with a rod of iron, and that his violent and threatening language to Wingfield and himself at the dinner- table in Bergen-op-Zoom on the subject of the mutiny (when one hundred of the Gertruydenberg garrison were within sound of his voice) had been the chief cause of the rebellion. Inspired by these remonstrances, the Queen once more emptied the vials of her wrath upon the United Netherlands. The criminations and recriminations seemed endless, and it was most fortunate that Spain had been weakened, that Alexander, a prey to melancholy and to lingering disease, had gone to the baths of Spa to recruit his shattered health, and that his attention and the schemes of Philip for the year 1589 and the following period were to be directed towards France. Otherwise the commonwealth could hardly have escaped still more severe disasters than those already experienced in this unfortunate condition of its affairs, and this almost hopeless misunderstanding with its most important and vigorous friend.

While these events had been occurring in the heart of the republic, Martin Schenk, that restless freebooter, had been pursuing a bustling and most lucrative career on its outskirts. All the episcopate of Cologne-- that debatable land of the two rival paupers, Bavarian Ernest and Gebhard Truchsess--trembled before him. Mothers scared their children into quiet with the terrible name of Schenk, and farmers and land-younkers throughout the electorate and the land of Berg, Cleves, and Juliers, paid their black-mail, as if it were a constitutional impost, to escape the levying process of the redoubtable partisan.

But Martin was no longer seconded, as he should have been, by the States, to whom he had been ever faithful since he forsook the banner of Spain for their own; and he had even gone to England and complained to the Queen of the short-comings of those who owed him so much. His ingenious and daring exploit--the capture of Bonn--has already been narrated, but the States had neglected the proper precautions to secure that important city. It had consequently, after a six months' siege, been surrendered to the Spaniards under Prince Chimay, on the 19th of September; while, in December following, the city of Wachtendonk, between the Rhine and Meuse, had fallen into Mansfeld's hands. Rheinberg, the only city of the episcopate which remained to the deposed Truchsess, was soon afterwards invested by the troops of Parma, and Schenk in vain summoned the States- General to take proper measures for its defence. But with the enemy now eating his way towards the heart of Holland, and with so many dangers threatening them on every side, it was thought imprudent to go so far away to seek the enemy. So Gebhard retired in despair into Germany, and Martin did what he could to protect Rheinberg, and to fill his own coffers at the expense of the whole country side.

He had built a fort, which then and long afterwards bore his name- Schenken Schans, or Schenk's Sconce--at that important point where the Rhine, opening its two arms to enclose the "good meadow" island of Batavia, becomes on the left the Waal, while on the right it retains its ancient name; and here, on the outermost edge of the republic, and looking straight from his fastness into the fruitful fields of Munster, Westphalia, and the electorate, the industrious Martin devoted himself with advantage to his favourite pursuits.

On the 7th of August, on the heath of Lippe, he had attacked a body of Spanish musketeers, more than a thousand strong, who were protecting a convoy of provisions, treasure, and furniture, sent by Farnese to Verdugo, royal governor of Friesland. Schenk, without the loss of a single man, had put the greater part of these Spaniards and Walloons to the sword, and routed the rest. The leader of the expedition, Colonel Aristotle Patton, who had once played him so foul a trick in the surrender of Gelder, had soon taken to flight, when he found his ancient enemy upon him, and, dashing into the Lippe, had succeeded, by the strength and speed of his horse, in gaining the opposite bank, and effecting his escape. Had he waited many minutes longer it is probable that the treacherous Aristotle would have passed a comfortless half-hour with his former comrade. Treasure to the amount of seven thousand crowns in gold, five hundred horses, with jewels, plate, and other articles of value, were the fruit of this adventure, and Schenk returned with his followers, highly delighted, to Schenkenschans, and sent the captured Spanish colours to her Majesty of England as a token.

A few miles below his fortress was Nymegen, and towards that ancient and wealthy city Schenk had often cast longing eyes. It still held for the King, although on the very confines of Batavia; but while acknowledging the supremacy of Philip, it claimed the privileges of the empire. From earliest times it had held its head very high among imperial towns, had been one of the three chief residences of the Emperor. Charlemagne, and still paid the annual tribute of a glove full of pepper to the German empire.

On the evening of the 10th of August, 1589, there was a wedding feast in one of the splendid mansions of the stately city. The festivities were prolonged until deep in the midsummer's night, and harp and viol were still inspiring the feet of the dancers, when on a sudden, in the midst of the holiday-groups, appeared the grim visage of Martin Schenk, the man who never smiled. Clad in no wedding-garment, but in armour of proof, with morion on head, and sword in hand, the great freebooter strode heavily through the ball-room, followed by a party of those terrible musketeers who never gave or asked for quarter, while the affrighted revellers fluttered away before them.

Taking advantage of a dark night, he had just dropped down the river from his castle, with five-and-twenty barges, had landed with his most trusted soldiers in the foremost vessels, had battered down the gate of St. Anthony, and surprised and slain the guard. Without waiting for the rest of his boats, he had then stolen with his comrades through the silent streets, and torn away the lattice-work, and other slight defences on the rear of the house which they had now entered, and through which they intended to possess themselves of the market-place. Martin had long since selected this mansion as a proper position for his enterprise, but he had not been bidden to the wedding, and was somewhat disconcerted when he found himself on the festive scene which he had so grimly interrupted. Some of the merry-makers escaped from the house, and proceeded to alarm the town; while Schenk hastily fortified his position; and took possession of the square. But the burghers and garrison were soon on foot, and he was driven back into the house. Three times he recovered the square by main strength of his own arm, seconded by the handful of men whom he had brought with him, and three times he was beaten back by overwhelming numbers into the wedding mansion. The arrival of the greater part of his followers, with whose assistance he could easily have mastered the city in the first moments of surprise, was mysteriously delayed. He could not account for their prolonged, absence, and was meanwhile supported only by those who had arrived with him in the foremost barges.

The truth--of which he was ignorant--was, that the remainder of the flotilla, borne along by the strong and deep current of the Waal, then in a state of freshet, had shot past the landing-place, and had ever since been vainly struggling against wind and tide to force their way back to the necessary point. Meantime Schenk and his followers fought desperately in the market-place, and desperately in the house which he had seized. But a whole garrison, and a town full of citizens in arms proved too much for him, and he was now hotly besieged in the mansion, and at last driven forth into the streets.

By this time day was dawning, the whole population, soldiers and burghers, men, women, and children, were thronging about the little band of marauders, and assailing them with every weapon and every missile to be found. Schenk fought with his usual ferocity, but at last the musketeers, in spite of his indignant commands, began rapidly to retreat towards the quay. In vain Martin stormed and cursed, in vain with his own hand he struck more than one of his soldiers dead. He was swept along with the panic-stricken band, and when, shouting and gnashing his teeth with frenzy, he reached the quay at last, he saw at a glance why his great enterprise had failed. The few empty barges of his own party were moored at the steps; the rest were half a mile off, contending hopelessly against the swollen and rapid Waal. Schenk, desperately wounded, was left almost alone upon the wharf, for his routed followers had plunged helter skelter into the boats, several of which, overladen in the panic, sank at once, leaving the soldiers to drown or struggle with the waves. The game was lost. Nothing was left the freebooter but retreat. Reluctantly turning his back on his enemies, now in full cry close behind him, Schenk sprang into the last remaining boat just pushing from the quay. Already overladen, it foundered with his additional weight, and Martin Schenk, encumbered with his heavy armour, sank at once to the bottom of the Waal.

Some of the fugitives succeeded in swimming down the stream, and were picked up by their comrades in the barges below the town, and so made their escape. Many were drowned with their captain. A few days afterwards, the inhabitants of Nymegen fished up the body of the famous partisan. He was easily recognized by his armour, and by his truculent face, still wearing the scowl with which he had last rebuked his followers. His head was taken off at once, and placed on one of the turrets of the town, and his body, divided in four, was made to adorn other portions of the battlements; so that the burghers were enabled to feast their eyes on the remnants of the man at whose name the whole country had so often trembled.

This was the end of Sir Martin Schenk of Niddegem, knight, colonel, and brigand; save that ultimately his dissevered limbs were packed in a chest, and kept in a church tower, until Maurice of Nassau, in course of time becoming master of Nymegen, honoured the valiant and on the whole faithful freebooter with a Christian and military burial.

A few months later (October, 1589) another man who had been playing an important part in the Netherlands' drama lost his life. Count Moeurs and Niewenaar, stadholder of Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overysael, while inspecting some newly-invented fireworks, was suddenly killed by their accidental ignition and explosion. His death left vacant three great stadholderates, which before long were to be conferred upon a youth whose power henceforth was rapidly to grow greater.

The misunderstanding between Holland and England continuing, Olden- Barneveld, Aerssens, and Buys, refusing to see that they had done wrong in denouncing the Dutch and English traitors who had sold Gertruydenberg to the enemy, and the Queen and her counsellors persisting in their anger at so insolent a proceeding, it may easily be supposed that there was no great heartiness in the joint expedition against Spain, which had been projected in the autumn of 1588, and was accomplished in the spring and summer of 1589.

Nor was this well-known enterprise fruitful of any remarkable result. It had been decided to carry the war into Spain itself, and Don Antonio, prior of Crato, bastard of Portugal, and pretender to its crown, had persuaded himself and the English government that his name would be potent to conjure with in that kingdom, hardly yet content with the Spanish yoke. Supported by a determined force of English and Dutch adventurers, he boasted that he should excite a revolution by the magic of his presence, and cause Philip's throne to tremble, in return for the audacious enterprise of that monarch against England.

If a foray were to be made into Spain, no general and no admiral could be found in the world so competent to the adventure as Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake. They were accompanied, too, by Sir Edward Norris, and another of those 'chickens of Mars,' Henry Norris; by the indomitable and ubiquitous Welshman, Roger Williams, and by the young Earl of Essex, whom the Queen in vain commanded to remain at home, and who, somewhat to the annoyance of the leaders of the expedition, concealed himself from her Majesty's pursuit, and at last embarked in a vessel which he had equipped, in order not to be cheated of his share in the hazard and the booty. "If I speed well," said the spendthrift but valiant youth; "I will adventure to be rich; if not, I will never live, to see the end of my poverty."

But no great riches were to be gathered in the expedition. With some fourteen thousand men, and one hundred and sixty vessels--of which six were the Queen's ships of war, including the famous Revenge and the Dreadnought, and the rest armed merchantmen, English, and forty Hollanders--and with a contingent of fifteen hundred Dutchmen under Nicolas van Meetkerke and Van Laen, the adventurers set sail from Plymouth on the 18th of April, 1589.

They landed at Coruna--at which place they certainly could not expect to create a Portuguese revolution, which was the first object of the expedition--destroyed some shipping in the harbour, captured and sacked the lower town, and were repulsed in the upper; marched with six thousand men to Burgos, crossed the bridge at push of pike, and routed ten thousand Spaniards under Andrada and Altamira--Edward Norris receiving a desperate blow on the head at the passage' of the bridge, and being rescued from death by his brother John--took sail for the south after this action, in which they had killed a thousand Spaniards, and had lost but two men of their own; were joined off Cape Finisterre by Essex; landed a force at Peniche, the castle of which place surrendered to them, and acknowledged the authority of Don Antonio; and thence marched with the main body of the troops, under Sir John Norris, forty-eight miles to Lisbon, while Drake, with the fleet, was to sail up the Tagus.

Nothing like a revolution had been effected in Portugal. No one seemed to care for the Pretender, or even to be aware that he had ever existed, except the governor of Peniche Castle, a few ragged and bare-footed peasants, who, once upon the road, shouted "Viva Don Antonio," and one old gentleman by the way side, who brought him a plate of plums. His hopes of a crown faded rapidly, and when the army reached Lisbon it had dwindled to not much more than four thousand effective men--the rest being dead of dysentery, or on the sick-list from imprudence in eating and drinking--while they found that they had made an unfortunate omission in their machinery for assailing the capital, having not a single fieldpiece in the whole army. Moreover, as Drake was prevented by bad weather and head-winds from sailing up the Tagus, it seemed a difficult matter to carry the city. A few cannon, and the co-operation of the fleet, were hardly to be dispensed with on such an occasion. Nevertheless it would perhaps have proved an easier task than it appeared--for so great was the panic within the place that a large number of the inhabitants had fled, the Cardinal Viceroy Archduke Albert had but a very insufficient guard, and there were many gentlemen of high station who were anxious to further the entrance of the English, and who were afterwards hanged or garotted for their hostile sentiments to the Spanish government.

While the leaders were deliberating what course to take, they were informed that Count Fuentes and Henriquez de Guzman, with six thousand men, lay at a distance of two miles from Lisbon, and that they had been proclaiming by sound of trumpet that the English had been signally defeated before Lisbon, and that they were in full retreat.

Fired at this bravado, Norris sent a trumpet to Fuentes and Guzman, with a letter signed and sealed, giving them the lie in plainest terms, appointing the next day for a meeting of the two forces, and assuring them that when the next encounter should take place, it should be seen whether a Spaniard or an Englishman would be first to fly; while Essex, on his part, sent a note, defying either or both those boastful generals to single combat. Next day the English army took the field, but the Spaniards retired before them; and nothing came of this exchange of cartels, save a threat on the part of Fuentes to hang the trumpeter who had brought the messages. From the execution of this menace he refrained, however, on being assured that the deed would be avenged by the death of the Spanish prisoner of highest rank then in English hands, and thus the trumpeter escaped.

Soon afterwards the fleet set sail from the Tagus, landed, and burned Vigo on their way homeward, and returned to Plymouth about the middle of July.

Of the thirteen thousand came home six thousand, the rest having perished of dysentery and other disorders. They had braved and insulted Spain, humbled her generals, defied her power, burned some defenceless villages, frightened the peasantry, set fire to some shipping, destroyed wine, oil, and other merchandize, and had divided among the survivors of the expedition, after landing in England, five shillings a head prize-money; but they had not effected a revolution in Portugal. Don Antonio had been offered nothing by his faithful subjects but a dish of plums--so that he retired into obscurity from that time forward--and all this was scarcely a magnificent result for the death of six or seven thousand good English and Dutch soldiers, and the outlay of considerable treasure.

As a free-booting foray--and it was nothing else--it could hardly be thought successful; although it was a splendid triumph compared with the result of the long and loudly heralded Invincible Armada.

In France, great events during the remainder of 1588 and the following year, and which are well known even to the most superficial student of history, had much changed the aspect of European affairs. It was fortunate for the two commonwealths of Holland and England, engaged in the great struggle for civil and religious liberty, and national independence, that the attention of Philip became more and more absorbed- as time wore on--with the affairs of France. It seemed necessary for him firmly to establish his dominion in that country before attempting once more the conquest of England, or the recovery of the Netherlands. For France had been brought more nearly to anarchy and utter decomposition than ever. Henry III., after his fatal forgiveness of the deadly offence of Guise, felt day by day more keenly that he had transferred his sceptre--such as it was--to that dangerous intriguer. Bitterly did the King regret having refused the prompt offer of Alphonse Corse on the day of the barricades; for now, so long as the new generalissimo should live, the luckless Henry felt himself a superfluity in his own realm. The halcyon days were for ever past, when, protected by the swords of Joyeuse and of Epernon, the monarch of France could pass his life playing at cup and ball, or snipping images out of pasteboard, or teaching his parrots- to talk, or his lap-dogs to dance. His royal occupations were gone, and murder now became a necessary preliminary to any future tranquillity or enjoyment. Discrowned as he felt himself already, he knew that life or liberty was only held by him now at the will of Guise. The assassination of the Duke in December was the necessary result of the barricades in May; and accordingly that assassination was arranged with an artistic precision of which the world had hardly suspected the Valois to be capable, and which Philip himself might have envied.

The story of the murders of Blois--the destruction of Guise and his brother the Cardinal, and the subsequent imprisonment of the Archbishop of Lyons, the Cardinal Bourbon, and the Prince de Joinville, now, through the death of his father, become the young Duke of Guise--all these events are too familiar in the realms of history, song, romance, and painting, to require more than this slight allusion here.

Never had an assassination been more technically successful; yet its results were not commensurate with the monarch's hopes. The deed which he had thought premature in May was already too late in December. His mother denounced his cruelty now, as she had, six months before, execrated his cowardice. And the old Queen, seeing that her game was played out--that the cards had all gone against her--that her son was doomed, and her own influence dissolved in air, felt that there was nothing left for her but to die. In a week she was dead, and men spoke no more of Catharine de' Medici, and thought no more of her than if--in the words of a splenetic contemporary--"she had been a dead she-goat." Paris howled with rage when it learned the murders of Blois, and the sixteen quarters became more furious than ever against the Valois. Some wild talk there was of democracy and republicanism after the manner of Switzerland, and of dividing France into cantons--and there was an earnest desire on the part of every grandee, every general, every soldier of fortune, to carve out a portion of French territory with his sword, and to appropriate it for himself and his heirs. Disintegration was making rapid progress, and the epoch of the last Valois seemed mare dark and barbarous than the times of the degenerate Carlovingians had been. The letter-writer of the Escorial, who had earnestly warned his faithful Mucio, week after week, that dangers were impending over him, and that "some trick would be played upon him," should he venture into the royal presence, now acquiesced in his assassination, and placidly busied himself with fresh combinations and newer tools.