was 26th August, 1559. Philip's fleet consisted of ninety ships,
victualled, among other articles, with fifteen thousand capons, and
laden with such spoil as tapestry and silks, much of which had to
be thrown overboard in a storm to lighten the labouring vessels. It
seemed at one time as if the fleet must founder, but Philip reached
Spain in safety, and hastened to celebrate his escape, and emphasise
his policy of a universal religion, by an extensive _auto da fe_.

Flushing did not actually begin the war, in 1572, after the capture
of Brill at the mouth of the Maas, by the Water Beggars under De la
Marck, but it was the first town to respond to that invitation of
revolt against Alva and Spain. The foundations of the Dutch Republic
may have been laid at Brill, but it was the moral support of Flushing
that established them.

The date of the capture of Brill was April 1st, and Alva, who was then
at Brussels, suffered tortures from the Belgian wits. The word Brill,
by a happy chance, signifies spectacles, and a couplet was sung to
the effect that

On April Fool's Day
Duke Alva's spectacles were stolen away;

while, says Motley, a caricature was circulated depicting Alva's
spectacles being removed from his nose by De la Marck, while the Duke
uttered his habitual comment "'Tis nothing. 'Tis nothing."

What, however, began as little more than the desperate deed of some
hungry pirates, to satisfy their immediate needs, was soon turned
into a very far-reaching "something," by the action of Flushing,
whose burghers, under the Seigneur de Herpt, on hearing the news of
the rebellion of Brill, drove the Spanish garrison from the town. A
number of Spanish ships chancing to arrive on the same day, bringing
reinforcements, were just in time to find the town in arms. Had they
landed, the whole revolt might have been quelled, but a drunken loafer
of the town, in return for a pot of beer, offered to fire a gun at the
fleet from the ramparts. He was allowed to do so, and without a word
the fleet fell into a panic and sailed away. The day was won. It might
almost be said that that shot--that pot of beer--secured the freedom
of the Netherlands. Let this be remembered when John Barleycorn is
before his many judges.

A little later Brill sent help, and Flushing's independence was
secure. Motley describes this band of assistants in a picturesque
passage:--

"The expedition seemed a fierce but whimsical masquerade. Every ma