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Updated: May 21, 2025
A force of seven thousand, painfully collected by the Prince of Orange, moved towards the place, under command of Hohenlo and John of Nassau, but struck with wonder at what they saw, the leaders recognized the hopelessness of attempting relief. Maestricht was surrounded by a second Maestricht.
The Governor was entrenched at a place called Keiserslager, which Julius Caesar had once occupied. The city of Maestricht was in his immediate neighbourhood, which was thus completely under his protection, while it furnished him with supplies.
Through its almost impenetrable veil, bodies of men had been seen moving into the castle, and the tramp of cavalry had been distinctly heard, and the troops of Romero, Vargas, Oliveira, and Valdez had already arrived from Lier, Breda, Maestricht, and from the forts on the Scheld. The whole available force in the city was mustered without delay.
Meanwhile the duke of Cumberland took post with his whole army between the two Nethes, to cover Bergen-op-Zoom and Maestricht; and Mareschal Saxe called in his detachments with a view to hazard a general engagement. In the latter end of May the French king arrived at Brussels, and his general resolved to undertake the siege of Maestricht.
Was it not a diplomatic masterpiece, that from this frugal store they could contrive to eke out seven mortal months of negotiation? Two ideas the supremacy of his Majesty's prerogative, the exclusive exercise of the Roman Catholic religion these were the be-all and the end-all of their commission. Upon these two strings they were to harp, at least till the walls of Maestricht had fallen.
It is impossible to behold such effects of reiterated local movements, all of post-Tertiary date, without reflecting that, but for the accidental presence of the stratified drift, all of which might easily have been missing, where there has been so much denudation, even if it had once existed, we might have referred the verticality and flexures and faults of the rocks to an ancient period, such as the era between the Chalk with flints and the Maestricht Chalk, or to the time of the latter formation, or to the Eocene, or Miocene, or Pliocene eras, even the last of them long prior to the commencement of the glacial epoch.
At the head of 7000 foot and 3000 horse half-disciplined troops, partly Huguenot volunteers, partly German mercenaries he tried to cross the Meuse above Maestricht with the intention of effecting a junction with the Prince of Orange. He was accompanied by John and Henry of Nassau, his brothers, and Christopher, son of the Elector Palatine.
Though Theria received none of these letters, which were one by one handed over by Barbier to Desgrais, he all the same did go to Maestricht, where the marquise was to pass, of his own accord. There he tried to bribe the archers, offering much as 10,000 livres, but they were incorruptible.
A force of seven thousand, painfully collected by the Prince of Orange, moved towards the place, under command of Hohenlo and John of Nassau, but struck with wonder at what they saw, the leaders recognized the hopelessness of attempting relief. Maestricht was surrounded by a second Maestricht.
They were reminded that the Prince of Parma was using this minor negotiation "as a second string to his bow;" that nothing could be more puerile than to suppose the Spaniards capable, after securing Maestricht, of sending away their troops thus "deserting the bride in the midst of the honeymoon."
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