effort to induce the burgomaster to enter into farther
negotiations, but the latter remained firm, and no petition for release
from the sacred duty of resistance left the city. The two Van der Does,
Van Hout, Junker von Warmond, and other resolute men, who had already,
in the great assembly, denounced any intercourse with the enemy, now
valiantly supported him against his fellow-magistrates and the council,
that with the exception of seven of its members, persistently and
vehemently urged the commencement of negotiations.
Adrian rapidly recovered, but Doctor Bontius's prediction was terribly
fulfilled, for famine and pestilence vied with each other in horrible
fury, and destroyed almost half of all the inhabitants of the
flourishing city. Intense was the gloom, dark the sky, yet even amidst
the cruel woe there was many an hour in which bright sunshine illumined
souls, and hope unfurled her green banner. The citizens of Leyden rose
from their couches more joyously, than a bride roused by the singing
of her companions on her wedding-day, when on the morning of September
eleventh loud and long-continued cannonading was heard from the
distance, and the sky became suffused with a crimson glow. The villages
southwest of the city were burning. Every house, every barn that sunk
into ashes, burying the property of honest men, was a bonfire to the
despairing citizens.
The Beggars were approaching!
Yonder, where the cannon thundered and the horizon glowed, lay the
Land-scheiding, the bulwark which for centuries had guarded the plains
surrounding Leyden from the assaults of the waves, and now barred the
way of the fleet bringing assistance.
"Fall, protecting walls, rise, tempest, swallow thy prey, raging sea,
destroy the property of the husbandman, ruin our fields and meadows, but
drown the foe or drive him hence." So sang Janus Dousa, so rang a voice
in Peter's soul, so prayed Maria, and with her thousands of men and
women.
But the glow in the horizon died away, the firing ceased. A second day
elapsed, a third and fourth, but no messenger arrived, no Beggar ship
appeared, and the sea seemed to be calm; but another terrible power
increased, moving with mysterious, stealthy, irresistible might; Death,
with his pale companions, Despair and Famine.
The dead were borne secretly to their graves under cover of the darkness
of night, to save their scanty ration for the survivors, in the division
of food. The angel of death fl
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