daal, and other points, and especially to
occupy the important fort called St. Albert, which was in the downs at
about a league from that city. All this work was thoroughly accomplished;
little or no resistance having been made to the occupation of these
various places. Meantime the States-General, who at the special request
of Maurice were to accompany the expedition in order to observe the
progress of events for which they were entirely responsible, and to aid
the army when necessary by their advice and co-operation, had assembled
to the number of thirteen in Ostend. Solms having strengthened the
garrison of that place then took up his march along the beach to
Nieuport. During the progress of the army through Holland and Zeeland
towards its place of embarkation there had been nothing but dismal
prognostics, with expressions of muttered indignation, wherever the
soldiers passed. It seemed to the country people, and to the inhabitants
of every town and village, that their defenders were going to certain
destruction; that the existence of the commonwealth was hanging by a
thread soon to be snapped asunder. As the forces subsequently marched
from the Sas of Ghent towards the Flemish coast there was no rising of
the people in their favour, and although Maurice had issued distinct
orders that the peasantry were to be dealt with gently and justly, yet
they found neither peasants nor villagers to deal with at all. The whole
population on their line of march had betaken themselves to the woods,
except the village sexton of Jabbeke and his wife, who were too old to
run. Lurking in the thickets and marshes, the peasants fell upon all
stragglers from the army and murdered them without mercy--so difficult is
it in times of civil war to make human brains pervious to the light of
reason. The stadholder and his soldiers came to liberate their brethren
of the same race, and speaking the same language, from abject submission
to a foreign despotism. The Flemings had but to speak a word, to lift a
finger, and all the Netherlands, self-governed, would coalesce into one
independent confederation of States, strong enough to defy all the
despots of Europe. Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged
their chains, and preferred the tyranny under which their kindred had
been tortured, burned, and buried alive for half-a-century long, to the
possibility of a single Calvinistic conventicle being opened in any
village of obedient Flanders. S