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The Spanish Netherlands were almost entirely shut off from the sea, the rivers Scheldt and Meuse being hardly navigable for them on account of the control of those waters by Holland. The Dutch were attracting to their dominions all artisans, navigators, and traders. Despising all other nations and giving them the law, they had ruined the obedient provinces.
It was Joyeuse attacking and trying to force the barrier across the Scheldt, and who would soon penetrate into the city, at least, so the French hoped. But it was not so; Joyeuse had weighed anchor and sailed, and was making rapid progress, favored by the west wind.
Fearful indeed, and destructive, was the first movement in which this general political sympathy announced itself; a desolating war of thirty years, which, from the interior of Bohemia to the mouth of the Scheldt, and from the banks of the Po to the coasts of the Baltic, devastated whole countries, destroyed harvests, and reduced towns and villages to ashes; which opened a grave for many thousand combatants, and for half a century smothered the glimmering sparks of civilization in Germany, and threw back the improving manners of the country into their pristine barbarity and wildness.
The French now declared the Scheldt a free river, to be used by all nations. This was tidings of great joy to the Belgians; but England would not allow the Treaty of Münster to be torn up in this way, and a war began between England and France, which lasted till the fall of Napoleon in 1814. During all that war Belgium was ruled by the French.
In order to accomplish this object, he would forthwith attempt to make himself master of the banks of the Scheldt, and would even throw a bridge across the stream, if his plans were not instantly circumvented.
Once of great commercial importance, although somewhat fallen away from its original prosperity, Bergen was well situate on a little stream which connected it with the tide-waters of the Scheldt, and was the only place in Brabant, except Willemstad, still remaining to the States. Opposite lay the Isle of Tholen from which it was easily to be supplied and reinforced.
The Duc d'Alva sent his own son Frederic against the revolters, who took from them Zutphen, Nardem, and Haarlem; but this check, far from discouraging them, seemed to give them new strength. All took up arms, from the Zuyderzee to the Scheldt. Spain began to tremble, recalled the Duc d'Alva, and sent as his successor Louis de Requesens, one of the conquerors at Lepanto.
The efforts of the French kings, while unable to crush Flemish independence, succeeded, nevertheless, in checking the power of the counts, while other States, such as Brabant, were allowed to develop more freely beyond the Scheldt.
All our cruisers would be to the eastward. One afternoon perhaps, when a haze is on, they make a feint with light craft toward the Scheldt every British ship crowds sail after them.
In spite of the efforts made by the emperors to fortify the line of the Scheldt at Antwerp and Valenciennes, his successor, Baldwin V, the Bearded, crossed the river, and, after pushing as far as the Dendre, obtained from Henry II the investiture of the country of Alost and Zeeland.
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