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HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce—1609
By John Lothrop Motley
MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Vol. 53
History of the United Netherlands, 1587
Situation of Sluys—Its Dutch and English Garrison—Williams writes from Sluys to the Queen—Jealousy between the Earl and States— Schemes to relieve Sluys—Which are feeble and unsuccessful—The Town Capitulates—Parma enters—Leicester enraged—The Queen angry with the Anti-Leicestrians—Norris, Wilkes, and Buckhurst punished— Drake sails for Spain—His Exploits at Cadiz and Lisbon—He is rebuked by Elizabeth.
When Dante had passed through the third circle of the Inferno—a desertof red-hot sand, in which lay a multitude of victims of divine wrath,additionally tortured by an ever-descending storm of fiery flakes—he wasled by Virgil out of this burning wilderness along a narrow causeway.This path was protected, he said, against the showers of flame, by thelines of vapour which rose eternally from a boiling brook. Even by suchshadowy bulwarks, added the poet, do the Flemings between Kadzand andBruges protect their land against the ever-threatening sea.
It was precisely among these slender dykes between Kadzand and Brugesthat Alexander Farnese had now planted all the troops that he couldmuster in the field. It was his determination to conquer the city ofSluys; for the possession of that important sea-port was necessary forhim as a basis for the invasion of England, which now occupied all thethoughts of his sovereign and himself.
Exactly opposite the city was the island of Kadzand, once a fair andfertile territory, with a city and many flourishing villages upon itssurface, but at that epoch diminished to a small dreary sand-bank by theencroachments of the ocean.
A stream of inland water, rising a few leagues to the south of Sluys,divided itself into many branches just before reaching the city,converted the surrounding territory into a miniature archipelago—theislands of which were shifting treacherous sand-banks at low water, andsubmerged ones at flood—and then widening and deepening into aconsiderable estuary, opened for the city a capacious harbour, and anexcellent although intricate passage to the sea. The city, which waswell built and thriving, was so hidden in its labyrinth of canals andstreamlets, that it seemed almost as difficult a matter to find Sluys asto conquer it. It afforded safe harbour for five hundred large vessels;and its possession, therefore, was extremely important for Parma.Besides these natural defences, the place was also protected byfortifications; which were as well constructed as the best of thatperiod. There was a strong rampire and many towers. There was also adetached citadel of great strength, looking towards the sea, and therewas a ravelin, called St. Anne's, looking in the direction of Bruges.A mere riband of dry land in that quarter was all of solid earth to befound in the environs of Sluys.
The city itself stood upon firm soil, but that soil had been hollowedinto a vast system of subterranean magazines, not for warlike purposes,but for cellars, as Sluys had been from a remote period the greatent