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Updated: July 13, 2025
Guided by the light of the fireships they approached the dyke, and the Zeelanders sprang ashore and climbed up. They were met by several hundred Spanish troops, who, as soon as they saw the fireships burn out harmlessly, sallied out from their forts. The Zeelanders were beginning to give way when the Antwerp fleet came up on the other side, headed by Sainte Aldegonde.
On the following day the rest of the troops made their appearance, and in the course of five hours were safely disembarked. The army, which consisted of Zeelanders, Frisians, Hollanders, Walloons, Germans, English, and Scotch, was divided into three corps.
Thus the whole fiery fleet had set forth, almost at once, upon its fatal voyage. It was known to Parma that preparations for an attack were making at Antwerp, but as to the nature of the danger he was necessarily in the dark. He was anticipating an invasion by a fleet from the city in combination with a squadron of Zeelanders coming up from below.
The whole force then marched in, the Dutch companies under Colonel Pyion being first, Lord Willoughby's men being second, and Sir Philip with his Zeelanders bringing up the rear. The garrison, between five and six hundred in number, though surprised, resisted gallantly, and were all put to the sword. Of the invaders, not a single man lost his life.
Beside the chain-gang, each of Spinola's ships was manned by two hundred soldiers, while thirty-six musketeers from the Flushing garrison were the only men-at-arms in De Moor's whole squadron. But those amphibious Zeelanders and Hollanders, perfectly at home in the water, expert in handling vessels, and excellent cannoneers, were more than a match for twenty times their number of landsmen.
Would not Howard, Drake, Frobisher, Seymour, Winter, and Hawkins, be swept out of the straits at last, yielding an open passage to Medina, Oquendo, Recalde, and Farnese? Would those Hollanders and Zeelanders, cruising so vigilantly among their treacherous shallows, dare to maintain their post, now that the terrible 'Holofernese, with his invincible legions, was resolved to come forth?
And as the foremost still pressed nearer and nearer, striving to clamber up the shattered counterscarp and through every practicable breach, the English, Hollanders, and Zeelanders, met them in the gap, not only at push of pike, but with their long daggers and with flaming pitchhoops, and hurled them down to instant death.
Rogers thought it a good opportunity to put in a word for the Dutchmen; who certainly, would not have thanked him for his assistance at that moment. "Not, to give offence to your Highness," he said, "if the Hollanders and Zeelanders, with their confederates, like to come into this treaty, surely your Highness would not object?"
There was also no doubt whatever and the circumstance was a source of constant complaint and of frequent ineffective legislation that the rebellious Provinces were driving a most profitable trade with Spain and the Spanish possessions, in spite of their revolutionary war. The mines of Peru and Mexico were as fertile for the Hollanders and Zeelanders as for the Spaniards themselves.
The rest were native Netherlanders, among whom, however, were very few Hollanders and Zeelanders, from which races the navy, both public and mercantile, was almost wholly supplied. The revenue of the United Provinces was estimated at between seven and eight millions of florins.
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