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Updated: May 1, 2025
Without doubt Maastricht authorities were waiting for us even as we stepped off the train, showing that we were doomed from the time we left the border. Our captor, an unctuous, pink-cheeked politzei, made his appearance not far from the internment camp. Where were we going, and why? "To see the prisoners," we said.
Alexander of Parma had by means of his agents corrupted the greater part of the nobility of Flanders and Brabant, had laid siege to Maastricht, and, after a defence even more gallant and desperate than that of Haarlem, and several terrible repulses of his soldiers, had captured the city and put the greater part of its inhabitants men and women to the sword.
The nineteenth Earl had fallen in arms for the Protestant religion and for the liberties of Europe under the walls of Maastricht. His son Aubrey, in whom closed the longest and most illustrious line of nobles that England has seen, a man of loose morals, but of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners, was Lord Lieutenant of Essex, and Colonel of the Blues.
I will give you a letter to my correspondent in Maastricht begging him to provide some men on whom he can rely for this work. It would be difficult for you, a stranger in the town, to put your hand upon them." The next morning Ned, provided with the forged order of release, started on his journey.
And now, as the heavy door of the Maastricht police headquarters slammed in our faces, and the key rattled in the guardroom lock, my companion in crime threw down his hat and coat in rage.
At the end of that time we were under lock and key in the town of Maastricht, the Province of Limburg, and the supposedly free and neutral Kingdom of the Netherlands. We suspected at the time, and in view of what I learned upon a later trip to Berlin I am quite certain, that the long arm of the German Secret Service had reached out for us across the border.
A free passage was demanded of the states-general through Namur and Maastricht, for the provisions, ammunition, and artillery belonging to this new army; and though the English ambassador remonstrated against their compliance, and represented it as a breach of the neutrality their high mightinesses declared they would observe, yet, after some hesitation, the demand was granted; and their inability to prevent the passage of the French troops, should it be attempted by force, pleaded in excuse of their conduct.
He, in the month of January, proposed that the duke of Cumberland should cross the sea, and confer with the prince of Orange on this subject; he undertook, at the peril of his head, to cover Maastricht with seventy thousand men, from all attacks of the enemy: but his representations seemed to have made very little impression on those to whom they were addressed.
Maastricht drove out its garrison; but the Spaniards advanced against the town, seized a vast number of women, and placing these before them advanced to the assault. The citizens dared not fire, as many of their own wives or sisters were among the women; the town was therefore taken, and a hideous massacre followed.
Among the thousands of these poor refugees that crossed the frontier at Maastricht and besieged the doors of the Belgian consul there was no railing or declaiming against the horror of their situation. The pathos of lonely, staring, apathetic endurance was tragic beyond expression.
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