1601 - Siege of Rheinberg
The archduke called together at Brussels the states of the Catholic provinces, who, when assembled, communicated their opinion, that nothing but peace would satisfy the inhabitants, or preserve the country from exhaustion and complete ruin. He could not but see the reasonableness of the view thus presented to him, and resolved to attempt a treaty. The states of Holland readily embraced the intimations made to them, and at length commissioners from both parties were nominated, and met at Bergen-op-Zoom; but their negotiations were broken of almost as soon as they had commenced. The Spanish deputies demanded that the new republicans should submit themselves to their ancient masters. But this was received by the deputies of Holland as worse than insult, and as a proof of the insincerity of those with whom it had originated, who must have known that such a proposition could never be permitted to become a subject of discussion. The parties soon separated, and during the winter that followed both made preparations for continuing the war.
Maurice could not take Nieuport, and winter put a stop to the campaign without any great change in the relative position bf the belligerents. Early in the spring of 1601, Maurice found himself at the head of an army of 16,000 men, composed chiefly of English and French, who, in this instance, cheerfully united and rivaled each other. He attacked the town of Rheinberg, and took it; but from before Bois-le-Duc he was obliged to retire. The whole attention of both the contending armies was drawn toward Ostend, a place of some though but little importance to either party, and the Dutch seem to have made it a point of honor not to yield it up. The attack and the defense were carried on with equal skill, courage, and perseverance, and the operations, protracted for more than three years, kept alive the anxiety of all the military men of Europe during that period. Sir Francis Vere commanded in the place at the time of the first investment; but governors, garrisons, and besieging forces, were renewed and replaced with a rapidity which gave one of the most frightful instances of the ravages of war.
This siege became a school for the young nobility of all Europe, who repaired to the one party or the other to learn the principles and the practice of attack and defense. Every thing that the military skill of that age could devise was resorted to on either side. The slaughter in the various assaults, sorties, and bombardments, was enormous. Squadrons at sea gave a double interest to the land operations. The celebrated brothers, Frederick and Ambrose Spinola, founded their reputation on both elements. Frederick was, however, killed in one of the naval combats with the Dutch galleys, and Ambrose acquired his fame by the ultimate conquest of Ostend.
In 1601 the archduke began the famous siege of Ostend, which lasted three years and two months; the losses on both sides, more especially among the Spanish, were immense. While it continued, the coolness between the States General and Maurice steadily increased; for they thought his cold ambitious nature capable of anything, and saw with fear the paramount influence he had over the army. Their instincts led them to rest on the ships, to prefer peace to war, and commerce to glory. It was during the siege of Ostend that they established the Dutch East India Company in 1602, though its basis had been laid down by a group of Amsterdam traders in 1595.
As the Dutch had the superiority at sea, they could throw in renewed succors, while the Spaniards having full possession of the surrounding land, could bring to the besiegers whatever stores or recruits were needed. Redoubled attacks and multiplied mines at length reduced the town to a mere mass of ruins, and scarcely left to its undaunted garrison sufficient footing on which to prolong their desperate defense. Ostend at length surrendered on the 22d of September 1604, after a siege which had commenced in July 1601. The victors marched in over its crumbled walls and shattered batteries. Scarcer a vestige of the place remained beyond those terrible evidences of destruction. The ditches filled up with the rubbish of ramparts, bastions, and redoubts, left no distinct line of separation between the operations of attack and defense. It resembled a vast sepulcher rather than a ruined town, a mountain of earth and rubbish, without a single house in which the wretched remnant of the inhabitants could hide their heads.
The death of Queen Elizabeth of England in 1603 happened during this siege, and some time was passed in anxious expectation of what would be the conduct of her successor, who was actuated on the one side by his high opinion of the rights of royalty, and on the other by the policy of his English ministers, and the representations of Henry IV of France. In this case, though he threatened, he did not withdraw his troops from the Dutch; but he, at the same time, gave liberty to the Spaniards to raise recruits in England for the Belgic states.
In 1604 Maurice took Sluis, and Ostend at last fell to Spinola. Thenceforward the main lines of the struggle by land were simple enough: the Spaniards tried to transfer the seat of war into the United Provinces, and were steadily foiled by Maurice. All the while the States General aimed at peace, though the naval war became vigorous as that on land languished. The sea fight off Gibraltar in 1607 utterly ruined the Spanish fleet, and left her commerce powerless. At last, after long negotiations, which served to emphasize the variance between the patriot party, headed by Barneveldt and Grotius, and the war party, which included the official classes, the army, navy, East India Company, the clergy, and the populace in the towns, a truce for twelve years was signed, on the uti possidetis ground, between Spain and Holland.In the war the Dutch had added Overyssel and Groningen to the union; they held Sluis, Hulst, and other ports on the Flemish side, in what is called "Dutch Flanders"; they had Bergen op-Zoom, Breda, and Herzogenbusch on the Brabant frontier, and the forts which commanded the Scheldt and strangled Antwerp for the sake of Amsterdam; lastly, they were become lords of the sea, and the chief traders of the world.
