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To the east the towers of Utrecht are visible, and to the north glitter in the morning sun the red roofs of Zaandam and Alkmaar. Far away stretched the waters of the Zuider Zee, which Holland plans to reclaim by an enbankment from the extreme cape of North Holland, to the Friesland coast, so as to shut out the ocean, and thereby acquire 750,000 square miles of new land; a whole province.
The priests zealously taught that the Protestants were devil-worshippers and magicians; and the common people so implicitly believed in the truth of the statement, that we find one poor prisoner, taken by the Dutch at the siege of Alkmaar in 1578, making a desperate attempt to save his life by promising to worship his captors' devil precisely as they did a suggestion that failed to pacify those to whom it was addressed.
He was the bearer of the copy of a letter sent from the prince to Sonoy, ordering him to protect the dykes and sluices with strong guards, lest the peasants, in order to save their crops, should repair the breaches. He was directed to flood the whole country at all risks rather than to allow Alkmaar to fall.
"It is a martyrdom to which I summon all Christians and royalists." "General Brune is at Nantes with the eight thousand prisoners just returned to us by the English after their defeats at Alkmaar and Castricum." "That is the last time they will have the chance. The Blues have taught us the bad habit of not making prisoners.
Perfectly inordinate sums were offered in advance for growing crops or for particular bulbs; most of the transactions being purely paper speculations, a gambling in futures. Millions of guilders were risked, and hundreds of thousands lost or won. In 1637 the crash came, and many thousands of people, in Amsterdam, Haarlem, Leyden, Alkmaar and other towns in Holland, were brought to ruin.
He promised himself, however, an ample compensation for all this ingratitude, in the wholesale vengeance which he purposed to wreak upon Alkmaar. Already he gloated in anticipation over the havoc which would soon be let loose within those walls.
From that bleak isthmus the light of freedom was to stream through many years upon struggling humanity in Europe; a guiding pharos across a stormy sea; and Harlem, Leyden, Alkmaar names hallowed by deeds of heroism such as have not often illustrated human annals, still breathe as trumpet-tongued and perpetual a defiance to despotism as Marathon, Thermopylae, or Salamis.
Such ravings, if invented by the pen of fiction, would seem a puerile caricature; proceeding, authentically, from his own, they still appear almost too exaggerated for belief. "If I take Alkmaar," he wrote to Philip, "I am resolved not to leave a single creature alive; the knife shall be put to every throat.
At Alkmaar the rolling waves of insolent conquest were stayed, and the tide then ebbed for ever. The accomplished soldier struggled hopelessly, with the wild and passionate hatred which his tyranny had provoked. Neither his legions nor his consummate strategy availed him against an entirely desperate people.
Daily skirmishes, without decisive result; had taken place outside the walls. At last, on the 18th of September, after a steady cannonade of nearly twelve hours, Don Frederic, at three in the afternoon, ordered an assault. Notwithstanding his seven months' experience at Harlem, he still believed it certain that he should carry Alkmaar by storm.
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