History of the United Netherlands, 1588-89 | Page 5

extinguished, now flamed
forth afresh. The States published a placard denouncing the men who
had thus betrayed the cause of freedom, and surrendered the city of
Gertruydenberg to the Spaniards, as perjured traitors whom it was made

lawful to hang, whenever or wherever caught, without trial or sentence,
and offering fifty florins a-head for every private soldier and one
hundred florins for any officer of the garrison. A list of these
Englishmen and Netherlanders, so far as known, was appended to the
placard, and the catalogue was headed by the name of Sir John
Wingfield.
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withdrawn, in honourable fashion from the list of traitors, by authority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