ing city which had so
recently been secured?

The Irish kernes--and they are described by all contemporaries, English
and Flemish, in the same language--were accounted as the wildest and
fiercest of barbarians. There was something grotesque, yet appalling, in
the pictures painted of these rude, almost naked; brigands, who ate raw
flesh, spoke no intelligible language, and ranged about the country,
burning, slaying, plundering, a terror to the peasantry and a source of
constant embarrassment to the more orderly troops in the service of the
republic. "It seemed," said one who had seen them, "that they belonged
not to Christendom, but to Brazil." Moreover, they were all Papists, and,
however much one might be disposed to censure that great curse of the
age, religious intolerance--which was almost as flagrant in the councils
of Queen Elizabeth as in those of Philip--it was certainly a most fatal
policy to place such a garrison, at that critical juncture, in the
newly-acquired city. Yet Leicester, who had banished Papists from Utrecht
without cause and without trial, now placed most notorious Catholics in
Deventer.

Zutphen, which was still besieged by the English and the patriots, was
much crippled by the loss of the great fort, the capture of which, mainly
through the brilliant valour of Stanley's brother Edward, has already
been related. The possession of Deventer and of this fort gave the
control of the whole north-eastern territory to the patriots; but, as if
it were not enough to place Deventer in the hands of Sir William Stanley,
Leicester thought proper to confide the government of the fort to Roland
York. Not a worse choice could be made in the whole army.

York was an adventurer of the most audacious and dissolute character. He
was a Londoner by birth, one of those "ruing blades" inveighed against by
the governor-general on his first taking command of the forces. A man of
desperate courage, a gambler, a professional duellist, a bravo, famous in
his time among the "common hacksters and swaggerers" as the first to
introduce the custom of foining, or thrusting with the rapier in single
combats--whereas before his day it had been customary among the English
to fight with sword and shield, and held unmanly to strike below the
girdle--he had perpetually changed sides, in the Netherland wars, with
the shameless disregard to principle which characterized all his actions.
He had been lieutenant to the infamous John Van Im