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Updated: May 15, 2025
These disasters might have been retrieved if the channel of communication with Damme and Sluis had not been lost; but for a long time the condition of this important waterway had been the cause of grave anxiety to the people of Bruges.
Charters, moreover, had been granted to various persons, under which they drained the adjoining lands, and gradually reclaimed large portions from the sea. The channel, at no time very deep, became shallower, narrower, and more difficult of access, until at last, during the second half of the fifteenth century, the passage between Sluis and Damme was navigable only by small ships.
It is strange to think that Flemish peasants work, and cattle feed, and holiday visitors from Knocke, or Sluis, or Kadzand ramble about dry-shod where the waves were rolling in on that midsummer's morning, and that far beneath the grass the timbers of so many stout ships and the bones of so many valiant seamen have long since mouldered away.
Hastily gathering a force of some ten companies from the garrison of Utrecht, some of which very troops had recently and unluckily for government, been removed from Brill to that city, the Count crossed the Sluis to the island of Voorn upon Easter day, and sent a summons to the rebel force to surrender Brill.
The position of Leicester was shaken also by his inability to relieve Sluis, which important seaport fell after a long siege into Parma's hands, August 5. Its capture was attributed by rumour, which in this case had no foundation, to the treachery of the English governor and garrison.
In any case the capture of Sluis was an offset to the loss of Ostend; and its importance was marked by the appointment of Frederick Henry, the young brother of the stadholder, as governor of the seaport and the surrounding district, which received the name of States-Flanders.
M. de la Grange has chartered a yacht to go to the South River, with a lot of merchandise, and to take to his land there the boor, whom he had brought for that purpose from the Fatherland. This person came from near Sluis, and had done nothing here as yet, because De la Grange had not gone to Tinaconcq, as he had first intended.
Six years after the Battle of Sluis, Louis of Nevers was killed at Crecy, and his son, Louis of Maele, reigned in his stead as Count of Flanders.
His advance was a triumphal progress. Sluis, Cadsand and Axel surrendered almost without opposition. Only the timely arrival of an English squadron in the Scheldt saved Zeeland from invasion. The news of these events caused an immense sensation. For some time popular resentment against the feebleness and jobbery of the stadholderless government had been deep and strong.
This doone, they tooke vp the bodie of him whom the Flemish writers call the earle of Penbroke, and got them againe to the sea, for that they were aduertised how the duke of Burgognie meant to besiege Calis. Wherevpon raising their siege thus from Sluis castell, they returned vnto the defense of the towne of Calis, so much desired of the French nation.
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