The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1572-73 | Page 8

the stout commandant of the little garrison, Ripperda, had
assembled the citizens and soldiers in the market-place. He warned
them of the absolute necessity to make a last effort for freedom. In
startling colors he held up to them the fate of Mechlin, of Zutphen, of
Naarden, as a prophetic mirror, in which they might read their own fate
should they be base enough to surrender the city. There was no
composition possible, he urged, with foes who were as false as they
were sanguinary, and whose foul passions were stimulated, not slaked,
by the horrors with which they had already feasted themselves.
Ripperda addressed men who could sympathize with his bold and lofty
sentiments. Soldiers and citizens cried out for defence instead of
surrender, as with one voice, for there were no abject spirits at Harlem,
save among the magistracy; and Saint Aldegonde, the faithful minister
of Orange, was soon sent to Harlem by the Prince to make a thorough
change in that body.
Harlem, over whose ruins the Spanish tyranny intended to make its
entrance into Holland, lay in the narrowest part of that narrow isthmus

which separates the Zuyder Zee from the German Ocean. The distance
from sea to sea is hardly five English miles across. Westerly from the
city extended a slender strip of land, once a morass, then a fruitful
meadow; maintained by unflagging fortitude in the very jaws of a
stormy ocean. Between the North Sea and the outer edge of this pasture
surged those wild and fantastic downs, heaped up by wind and wave in
mimicry of mountains; the long coils of that rope of sand, by which,
plaited into additional strength by the slenderest of bulrushes, the
waves of the North Sea were made to obey the command of man. On
the opposite, or eastern aide, Harlem looked towards Amsterdam. That
already flourishing city was distant but ten miles. The two cities were
separated by an expanse of inland water, and united by a slender
causeway. The Harlem Lake, formed less than a century before by the
bursting of four lesser, meres during a storm which had threatened to
swallow the whole Peninsula, extended itself on the south and east; a
sea of limited dimensions, being only fifteen feet in depth with seventy
square miles of surface, but, exposed as it lay to all the winds of heaven,
often lashed into storms as dangerous as those of the Atlantic. Beyond
the lake, towards the north, the waters of the Y nearly swept across the
Peninsula. This inlet of the Zuyder Zee was only separated from the
Harlem mere by a slender thread of land. Over this ran the causeway
between the two sister cities, now so unfortunately in arms against each
other. Midway between the two, the dyke was pierced and closed again
with a system of sluice-works, which when opened admitted the waters
of the lake into those of the estuary, and caused an inundation of the
surrounding country.
The city was one of the largest and most beautiful in the Netherlands. It
was also one of the weakest.--The walls were of antique construction,
turreted, but not strong. The extent and feebleness of the defences made
a large garrison necessary, but unfortunately, the garrison was even
weaker than the walls. The city's main reliance was on the stout hearts
of the inhabitants. The streets were, for that day, spacious and regular;
the canals planted with limes and poplars. The ancient church of Saint
Bavon, a large imposing structure of brick, stood almost in the centre of
the place, the most prominent object, not only of the town but of the
province, visible over leagues of sea and of land more level than the sea,
and seeming to gather the whole quiet little city under its sacred and

protective wings. Its tall open-work leaden spire was surmounted by a
colossal crown, which an exalted imagination might have regarded as
the emblematic guerdon of martyrdom held aloft over the city, to
reward its heroism and its agony.
It was at once obvious that the watery expanse between Harlem and
Amsterdam would be the principal theatre of the operations about to
commence. The siege was soon begun. The fugitive burgomaster, De
Fries, had tho effrontery, with the advice of Alva, to address a letter to
the citizens, urging them to surrender at discretion. The messenger was
hanged--a cruel but practical answer, which put an end to all further
traitorous communications. This was in the first week of December. On
the 10th, Don Frederic, sent a strong detachment to capture the fort and
village of Sparendam, as an indispensable preliminary to the
commencement of the siege. A peasant having shown Zapata, the
commander of the expedition, a secret passage across the flooded and
frozen meadows, the Spaniards