the fight
went on, each individual combatant seemed inspired by direct personal
malignity, and men found a pleasure in deeds of cruelty, from which
generations not educated to slaughter recoil with horror. To murder
defenceless prisoners; to drink, not metaphorically but literally, the
heart's blood of an enemy; to exercise a devilish ingenuity in inventions
of mutual torture, became not only a duty but a rapture. The Liberty of
the Netherlands had now been hunted to its lair. It had taken its last
refuge among the sands and thickets where its savage infancy had been
nurtured, and had now prepared itself to crush its tormentor in a last
embrace, or to die in the struggle.

After the conclusion of the sack and massacre of Naarden, Don Frederic
had hastened to Amsterdam, where the Duke was then quartered, that he
might receive the paternal benediction for his well-accomplished work.
The royal approbation was soon afterwards added to the applause of his
parent, and the Duke was warmly congratulated in a letter written by
Philip as soon as the murderous deed was known, that Don Frederic had so
plainly shown himself to be his father's son. There was now more work for
father and son. Amsterdam was the only point in Holland which held for
Alva, and from that point it was determined to recover the whole
province. The Prince of Orange was established in the southern district;
Diedrich Sonoy, his lieutenant, was stationed in North Holland. The
important city of Harlem lay between the two, at a spot where the whole
breadth of the territory, from sea to sea, was less than an hour's walk.
With the fall of that city the province would be cut in twain, the
rebellious forces utterly dissevered, and all further resistance, it was
thought, rendered impossible.

The inhabitants of Harlem felt their danger. Bossu, Alva's stadholder for
Holland, had formally announced the system hitherto pursued at Mechlin,
Zutphen, and Naarden, as the deliberate policy of the government. The
King's representative had formally proclaimed the extermination of man,
woman; and child in every city which opposed his authority, but the
promulgation and practice of such a system had an opposite effect to the
one intended. "The hearts of the Hollanders were rather steeled to
resistance than awed into submission by the fate of Naarden." A fortunate
event, too, was accepted as a lucky omen for the coming contest. A little
fleet of armed vessels, belonging to Hollan