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And these were the legions these very men or their immediate predecessors these Italians, Spaniards, Germans, and Walloons, who during so many terrible years had stormed and sacked almost every city of the Netherlands, and swept over the whole breadth of those little provinces as with the besom of destruction.
The Germans fought well, died well, but they could not reanimate the courage of the Walloons, and all were now in full retreat, pursued by the ferocious Spaniards. In vain Champagny stormed among them; in vain he strove to rally their broken ranks. With his own hand he seized a banner from a retreating ensign, and called upon the nearest soldiers to make's stand against the foe.
Three thousand picked men, a thousand from each nation, Spaniards, Walloons, and Germans, were speedily and secretly assembled at Bergen op Zoom, from the neighbourhood of which city, at a place called Aggier, it was necessary that the expedition should set forth.
Never was a solemn document, regarded with such perfectly bad faith by all its signers as the accord, of the 29th of October. Three days afterwards, a large force of Walloons and Germans was despatched from Brussels to the assistance of Antwerp.
This settlement extended subsequently toward 'Breukelen, named after an ancient Dutch village on the river Veght, in the province of Utrecht; so that Staten Island has the honor of having presented the first safe home, in America, and on her beautiful shores, to the Walloons or Huguenots.
This was an exaggeration, for his Majesty would have been well pleased to receive the whole of the country on the same terms which had been accepted by the Walloons. Meantime, those southern provinces had made their separate treaty, and the Netherlands were permanently dissevered. Maestricht had fallen. Disunion and dismay had taken possession of the country.
Germany has suddenly remembered that the Flemings are a Low German people and that they have been "oppressed" by the Walloons. One writer has even endeavoured to prove that the House of Hesse has a legitimate historical claim to the province of Brabant. But as the following extracts will show, there is method in this madness.
"They say he cut down twenty-one Walloons before he fell," continued Hans. "No, sir," interrupted Adam. "I saw him. He was shot before he raised his guilty sword." "Ah, ah! but it happened on the rampart." "They rushed over him to the assault." "And there he still lies; not a soul has cared for the dead and wounded."
The application was referred to the Virginia Company, but its conditions seem to have been too republican, and many of these Walloons looked, toward New-Netherland, where some arrived in 1624, with the Dutch Director, Minuit.
Nimble as monkeys, those yellow jerkined Italians, Walloons, and Spaniards stormhats on their heads and swords in their teeth had planted rope-ladders, swung themselves up the walls by hundreds upon hundreds, while the fight had been going on at the Porcupine, and were now rushing through the forts grinning defiance, yelling and chattering with fierce triumph, and beating down all opposition.
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