e--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, Volume 53, 1587

CHAPTER XVI.

Situation of Sluys--Its Dutch and English Garrison--Williams writes
from Sluys to the Queen--Jealousy between the Earl and States--
Schemes to relieve Sluys--Which are feeble and unsuccessful--The
Town Capitulates--Parma enters--Leicester enraged--The Queen angry
with the Anti-Leicestrians--Norris, Wilkes, and Buckhurst punished--
Drake sails for Spain--His Exploits at Cadiz and Lisbon--He is
rebuked by Elizabeth.

When Dante had passed through the third circle of the Inferno--a desert
of red-hot sand, in which lay a multitude of victims of divine wrath,
additionally tortured by an ever-descending storm of fiery flakes--he was
led by Virgil out of this burning wilderness along a narrow causeway.
This path was protected, he said, against the showers of flame, by the
lines of vapour which rose eternally from a boiling brook. Even by such
shadowy bulwarks, added the poet, do the Flemings between Kadzand and
Bruges protect their land against the ever-threatening sea.

It was precisely among these slender dykes between Kadzand and Bruges
that Alexander Farnese had now planted all the troops that he could
muster in the field. It was his determination to conquer the city of
Sluys; for the possession of that important sea-port was necessary for
him as a basis for the invasion of England, which now occupied all the
thoughts of his sovereign and himself.

Exactly opposite the city was the island of Kadzand, once a fair and
fertile territory, with a city and many flourishing villages upon its
surface, but at that epoch diminished to a small dreary sand-bank by the
encroachments of the ocean.

A stream of inland water, rising a few leagues to the south of Sluys,
divided itself into many branches just before reaching the city,
converted the surrounding territory into a miniature archipelago--the
islands of which were shifting treacherous sand-banks at low water, and
submerged ones at flood--and then widening and deepening into a
considerable estuary, opened for the city a capacious harbour, and an
excellent although intricate passage to the sea. The city, which was well
built and thriving, was so hidden in its labyrinth of canals and
streamlets, that it seemed almost as difficult a matter to find Sluys as
to conquer it. It afforded safe harbour for five hundred large vessels;
and its possession, therefore,