' commander-in-chief trenched and impregnable,
squarely established upon his line of communications. He reconnoitred,
called a council of war, and decided that to assail him were madness; to
remain, destruction. On the night of the 6th of May, he broke up his camp
and stole away in the darkness, without sound of drum or trumpet, leaving
all his fortifications and burning all his huts.

Thus had Maurice, after showing the world how strong places were to be
reduced, given a striking exhibition of the manner in which they were to
be saved.

Coeworden, after thirty-one weeks' investment, was relieved.

The stadholder now marched upon Groningen. This city was one of the most
splendid and opulent of all the Netherland towns. Certainly it should
have been one of the most ancient in Europe, since it derived its
name--according to that pains-taking banker, Francis Guicciardini--"from
Grun, a Trojan gentleman," who, nevertheless, according to Munster, was
"a Frenchman by birth."--"Both theories, however, might be true," added
the conscientious Florentine, "as the French have always claimed to be
descended from the relics of Troy." A simpler-minded antiquary might have
babbled of green fields, since 'groenighe,' or greenness, was a
sufficiently natural appellation for a town surrounded as was Groningen
on the east and west by the greenest and fattest of pastures. In
population it was only exceeded by Antwerp and Amsterdam. Situate on the
line where upper and nether Germany blend into one, the capital of a
great province whose very name was synonymous with liberty, and whose
hardy sons had clone fierce battle with despotism in every age, so long
as there had been human record of despotism and of battles, Groningen had
fallen into the hands of the foreign foe, not through the prowess of the
Spaniard but the treason of the Netherlander. The baseness of the
brilliant, trusted, valiant, treacherous young Renneberg has been
recorded on a previous page of these volumes. For thirteen years long the
republic had chafed at this acquisition of the hated enemy within its
very heart. And now the day had come when a blow should be struck for its
deliverance by the ablest soldier that had ever shown himself in those
regions, one whom the commonwealth had watched over from his cradle.

For in Groningen there was still a considerable party in favour of the
Union, although the treason of Renneberg had hitherto prevented both city
and province fr