First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [18]
Extreme Calvinist partisans, arising from the early persecution of Protestants, and forming wild and fėrocious bands of expert seamen, the Sea Beggars served the revolt by harassing Spanish shipping, while their activities added to the internal feuds of regions and factions.
The inveterate separatism and mutual jealousies of the cities and provinces of the Low Countries, in which each feared the advantages and influence that might be gained by its neighbor, could have permanently frustrated any united resistance to Spain if the struggle had not found a dynamic leader in William of Orange. By perseverance in what seemed a hopeless struggle, by remaining unshaken under every adversity or disappointment, by overriding the incessant contention of the provinces, by maintaining the single aim of union, by organizing his compatriots with political sagacity, William, though sometimes shifting ground and not always straightforward in his maneuvers, and mainly by strength of character, came to focus and personify the revolt. If it had carried a banner, it would have borne his words “It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.”
In 1574, the year after Den Briel, the heroic defense of Leyden against a Spanish siege rallied every city and citizen around the standard of revolt. Surrounded by lakes and laced by streams and canals of the lower Rhine, Leyden was a beautiful and prosperous cloth-manufacturing city on the rich soil of the Rhine delta called the Garden of Holland.
The weapon against Leyden was starvation. Alva had gone, but his successor tightened the siege until not a stray chicken nor a leaf of lettuce could get in. For seven months the enfeebled inhabitants subsisted on boiled leaves and roots and dried fish skins and on chaff from old threshings of wheat. When an occasional dog was slaughtered to feed the watch, the carcass might be torn apart in bleeding pieces and devoured raw. Disease stalked as always in the footsteps of famine, adding to the sick and wounded. In their extremity the inhabitants faced annihilation or surrender.
It was then they turned water, their old antagonist, into their weapon and ally. William of Orange proposed opening the dikes of the Meuse and Yssel and the rivers crossing the area between them and Leyden to flush out the besiegers and lay a shallow lake that would allow flat-bottomed scows and barges to sail over the land with provisions for the beleaguered city. Because of the potential damage of a flood to crops, the consent of landholders and farmers had to be gained. Messengers were sent on the dangerous mission through the lines to reach and return with their agreement. Daily more gaunt and feeble, no one in Leyden called for surrender. Meeting in Rotterdam, the States General rejected Spanish terms and accepted the proposal of William of Orange to open the dikes. They ordered 200 flat-bottomed barges and scows to be collected at Rotterdam and at Delft and other river ports, and to be loaded with arms and provisions. The boats also carried what proved essential for the relief, “a small but terrific” band of 800 grim-faced Sea Beggars, hideously scarred by the livid wounds of old battles.
In August, 1574, the order for breaking the dikes was issued. It was not just a matter of poking holes in the walls. Openings wide enough for the barges to pass through had to be breached under the not very efficient fire of the surrounding Spanish garrisons. Their weapons were the primitive muzzle-loading muskets of the 16th century, which after every discharge had to be reloaded with powder carried in bags around the soldiers’ necks. The Sea Beggars countered the attacks with their accustomed ferocity, and forced abandonment of the forts, driving the soldiers into the open where in growing alarm they watched the rising water creeping