The Dutch (32 page)

The sounds of the cannon fire echoed across the lake to where the crew's families gathered at the boathouse. Since dawn, Lord Karl had nervously paced up and down the dock waiting for word of the outcome. The almost metallic sound of field artillery told him their fleets had met a determined enemy. Sara, Reylana and the local matrons had converted the boathouse into a makeshift hospital. When the first vessels returned, the faster gunboats, each contained dead and injured sailors. Jon gave a brief report of the battle and Karl dispatched the news to the Baron. Soon the barges arrived with more dead and wounded men. Reylana nearly fainted when Henri was brought into the boathouse. She watched in horror as a healer removed the musket ball from her husband's shoulder. She visibly cringed as his wound was cauterized with a heated blade. The sight of the dead and dying awakened her darkest memories of Spain. Kahili, always at her side, comforted her as best he could. Reylana was blaming herself for allowing Henri to slip away to the battle. Her only consolation was that Gustoff had escaped injury and her other sons were safe in Rotterdam. Everyone realized war had reached the homeland and none could predict the final outcome, but everyone knew this was only the beginning of the pain and suffering. The Baron arrived and visited the wounded before making his way to a little cabin where Henri was taken. Both Jon and Gustoff were present when the Baron put his hand on Henri's good shoulder and whispered, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “We are again in your debt shipbuilder and there is much caulking to do when you recover.” The Baron spoke sternly to the two young men, “Do not let your sailors see you so dour. Your demeanor dishonors the men who sacrificed for this victory. You did the enemy more harm than expected. That Saxon column will attack no one for a while.”

The next morning, from his perch high on the First Fort's tower, the Baron watched as the Germanic cavalry systematically emerged from the completed causeway. He noticed their armor was attracting the morning sun which he hoped would shine into their eyes when they began their charge. The pageantry in their movements told him they had not yet learned their other column had been mauled by the gunboats. He noted Lutwaff was distributing his horsemen to both sides of the swale and units were dismounting but maintaining their formations. Their heavy cavalry were armed with the lance, a weapon the Baron considered long obsolete since the introduction of firearms to the battlefield. He had long ago armed his own horsemen with pistols, carbines and swords. It was obvious Lutwaff was awaiting more horsemen before advancing. The lack of German infantry demonstrated his contempt for everyone but his own cavalry. Spanish spies must have told him that the Dutch politicians had refused to send reinforcements to the Droger Land. That intelligence allowed Lutwaff to see what he wanted and expected to see: A small fortification that he could later pound into submission and some ragged infantry and mounted men that his cavalry could deal with immediately.

The Baron could now hear his four hundred infantrymen as they deployed in three ranks to the right of the fort. Thanks to the old gods the snow hid any trace of the staked ground to their front. The same woodcutters who staked the ground had built “A” frame oak barricades, sprinkled with eight foot spears to keep the enemy lances at bay. They were being positioned in front of the line. The Baron knew such barricades would not hold back the most determined horsemen who would find a way to reach the infantry. He hoped Gustoff‘s small guns and the musket and pistol fire of the infantry could hold the line until Lord Karl arrived. His thoughts were distracted by the arrival of the Friesian lords who leisurely positioned themselves behind the infantry formation. The Baron knew the infantry and the small force of mounted Frisians would be a tempting target for the arrogant Lutwaff. His bowmen, now well trained by Old Andries in the art of volley fire, were hidden within the inner ward of the fort. Each had three quiver loads of arrows at their disposal and could put ten arrows into the air in the same time it took a man to load and fire a firearm. Hopefully their arrows would devastate any horsemen who escaped having their horse's hoofs pierced by stakes. From the tower he could not see Karl's main force and surmised neither could the Germans. If all went well, they would arrive with demoralizing suddenness. Karl's mounted force had grown to eight hundred, thanks to the arrival of the Clover militia and others from Amsterdam, but the Baron's military instincts told him strategy and not numbers would decide the outcome. A victory would depend on a timely arrival. He trusted his brother would bring their horsemen at the proper time and knew Karl deserved the honor of leading that attack. No man could have prepared the Droger Land better for this conflict. It was at this moment he noticed two familiar young men making their way on galloping horses toward the fort. He yelled to the sentries to open the gate, feeling a bit of guilt about the way he had spoken to them the day before.

Jon and Gustoff joined the Baron at the top of the tower. Ignoring his son, he put a hand on Gustoff's shoulder and pointed to the swale, “I want you to sight the fort's largest cannon so the ball will hit somewhere midway down the swale. After you do that, take command of the field guns with the infantry; prepare the battery for an immediate assault on its front by cavalry.” Gustoff gave the Baron a formal salute and Jon a wink as he left. The Baron gave Jon the choice of riding with his Uncle at the head of the main body or staying with him. Jon's only visible reply was that he remained at his father's side. Both watched the seemingly endless flow of enemy horsemen disembarking from the distant causeway. After all these years of war, they knew this would be the first time any Dutch army would meet the enemy on an open battlefield.

The Baron seriously told his son, “We could both die this day.”

Jon laughed. “Fear not. By now, another Lord of the Droger Land had been born. My father, you have a grandson in Italy. If we lose our lives and homeland today, he will find a way with the help of the old gods to recapture our sacred land.”

The “Honors of War” demanded that warring forces parley peacefully before any battle commenced. It was a medieval custom that represented the last vestige of a more chivalrous time. To refuse such a meeting was considered an insult. The Baron knew a Saxon prince like Herman Lutwaff would follow the tradition. He would send a small honor guard down the swale under a banner of truce. The Baron did not want to grant Lutwaff any honor nor give his riders the opportunity to discover the handy-work of his woodcutters. Horns and drums could be heard in the distance as the Germans began to re-ascend their horses. The weight of their armor made remounting a task, so it was a while before the small party was sent forward over the snow-covered swale, flying a white banner of peace and one bearing Lutwaff's family crest. The Baron ordered a gunner to light the fuse of the cannon Gustoff had sighted. Within seconds, a single cannon ball landed among the approaching horsemen causing pandemonium. Every man of noble birth knew that the Lord of the Droger Land had chosen to dishonor Prince Lutwaff in full sight of both armies. For the Baron, it was partially a payback to the Prince's family. He hoped by day's end Lutwaff would pay the ultimate price.

The enraged Prince ordered his main force of heavy cavalry forward. They began to trot slowly toward the Dutch line of infantry as expected but Lutwaff did something else that could have spelled disaster for the Dutch. He sent not one, but two pincher columns of lighter and faster cavalry racing toward both sides of the Baron's position. The column on the left chose a lake side route. By that path they would reach the flank of the infantry without impaling any horses on the hidden stakes. The brave Frisians, sensing the danger, heroically threw themselves forward to meet this larger force. The pure ferocity of their Frisian neighbors halted the lead element of that German column momentarily, giving Gustoff time to turn his battery and fire upon the column. His canon fire stalled whatever was left of their momentum, allowing the Friesians to hold them momentarily in-check. Jon quickly left the fort with his father's fifty horsemen to intercept the other column. That enemy wing was larger, three hundred horsemen, but that column had an unexpected encounter with staked ground seriously diminished their numbers by the time Jon slammed into them. The Frisians and Jon's command were locked in a savage, desperate, horse-to-horse clash with vastly superior numbers of enemy horsemen. Neither Dutch force yielded an inch of ground. It was the most brutal and glorious moment of the day but the casualties mounted quickly. The Baron knew his outnumbered riders on both flanks were in great danger of being broken and overrun. He did his best to assist by having the archers send volley after volley of arrows against both waves of enemy light cavalry. At times his bowman shot directly over the heads of their own infantry; until the Baron returned the attention of his archers to the now charging main enemy force. The best heavy cavalry in all Europe was riding at full gallop to close with the Dutch infantry. They came to within fifty yards of the infantry before the front row of horses stopped almost in mid-gallop, and began throwing riders or crashing with them to the ground. Those undetected stakes, accurate musket fire, cannon fire from the fort and Gustoff's battery, and the unending volley of arrows, finally, made the most formidable heavy cavalry in the world, pause to regroup. Even then, some small groups broke through the barricades and reached the infantry line. For a few minutes the issue was in doubt.

It was at this point that Lord Karl arrived at exactly the right moment. He routed the Germans battling Jon on the left while the Clover Militia relieved the Friesians on the right. Both German wings of light horsemen broke in panic and attempted to flee, only to impale themselves on the deadly hidden stakes as they attempted to withdraw directly toward the causeway. When the flanking columns collapsed, Karl led his men through a safe passage in the staked ground and smashed into the stalled main force. They struck with such fury that an attempted withdrawal became a wholesale rout. Most of the enemy died retreating, with fatal wounds to their backs. Those who made it across the fields, found the causeway clogged by elements of their still disembarking army. The newcomers had no idea that the fortunes of war had gone against them. The Germans began jousting for space while the Baron's experienced veterans and the well-armed militia men from Amsterdam poured volley after volley of small arms fire into the bunched horsemen. Lutwaff died like his men, attempting to flee. It seemed ironic that his body was trampled under the hoofs of his own panicked horsemen. The turnip fields became wetlands again, now soaked with the life-blood of a thousand invaders and tragically, hundreds of Dutch citizen-soldiers willingly to sacrifice their lives for this victory. As the old gods had promised, long, long ago, the Droger Land would remain unconquered, at least for another day.

Clifford van Weir knew the most distressing event would be dealing with the horrific consequences of the bloody battle. The once picturesque fields were prominently scarred with the aftermath of war. Those fields, wrestled from the wetlands by the toil of residents, were too important agriculturally to become a haphazard resting place for dead men. The Baron knew the subsequent chore of removing the dead and dying must begin immediately. Knowing his people, he suspected his soldiers would have help with that grim chore. The sound of the battle and the eerie silence that followed the struggle had attracted local citizens, some who arrived from the town even before the enemy's defeat. Those civilians had inadvertently witnessed the slaughter. They had not come out of curiosity, or plunder, as other populations did following such climaxes in medieval warfare; they came out of concern for the welfare of fathers, husbands and sons who participated in the bloodletting. The earliest arrivals actually observed the snow-coated fields being showered red with blood and body parts of the enemy and their own relatives. All were shocked by the brutal reality of war. Regrettably, some saw a relative or neighbor die, while others were only now discovering the disfigured body of someone they cherished. They would never forget the grotesque manner the men on both sides had met their fate. These people saw firsthand the butchery that could be unleashed by a metal ball or sharpened iron blade used in anger These people would never forget a single detail. If they had been patriotic yesterday, they had seen enough today, to make the very idea of a Dutch “victory” meaningless. Burying a body or pieces of a body you hardly recognize, does that, to even the most partisan of men and women.

The Baron anticipated his worst losses would be within the thin line of infantry, but was not surprised, as events unfolded, that many brave Frisians and his own fearless horsemen had taken so many casualties. He was grateful that his valiant son, who gallantly led his small troop into battle, survived. He hoped Jesus and the old gods would bless all the brave men who had fallen, particularly those who rode to their deaths with Jon and had so willingly ridden with him since the endless war began. Despite the hidden stakes, the spear-tipped barricades, the accurate canon fire, and the awesome volleys of arrows, the thin line of infantry had often been breached by small groups of determined enemy horsemen. The brave farmers and tradesmen used spears, axes, knives, and their bare hands to kill those intruders. Most of the footmen managed to avoid the lances and somehow unhorse the fiercest riders in Europe. They did not falter, they did not run, and many had willingly sacrificed themselves as they swarmed as bees upon each horse and rider who reached their line. The Baron expected that courageous behavior; their ancestors had done similar deeds for almost eternity. Yet, he wondered if ordinarily men could be asked to do such deeds a second or third or fourth time. He knew the battle for the Droger Land would continue beyond this day.

As the conflict subsided, Clifford directed the archers within the walls, who were detached from the most brutal violence, to help deal with the wounded. The local people needed no command. They were already assisting the injured or carrying home the precious remains of loved ones. Their presence allowed the bowmen to concentrate their care on the wounded allies. Many brave men from places like Amsterdam and Frisia had paid a high price for victory.

The invaders were treated quite differently. Their fate was sealed when the Spanish forces executed entire Dutch populations earlier in the war. The Baron watched as his victorious soldiers systematically put the enemy wounded to the sword and stripped the bodies of weapons which the Baron had also ordered collected. Once that was done, the soldiers and even the civilians were free to loot everything else. Since armor and clothing had value, the German corpses quickly lay naked in the blood-drenched fields, even as their comrades were still being slaughtered at the causeway. When that massacre finally ended, the Baron dispatched Karl and his men to advance down the doomed roadway. Karl pursued those who had escaped the logjam of death, killing stragglers and capturing abandoned military supplies. The chase ended three miles into the swamp when some wily German veterans used lamp oil to set parts of the causeway afire behind them. The fire effectively blocked further pursuit but left many of their own comrades to their fate on the wrong side of the flames. Seeing the smoke from the burning causeway, the Baron sent the reserve infantry to collect whatever supplies Karl's men had secured. While completing the task they came upon pockets of Germans, waist deep in freezing water who offered little resistance. They were all slain and their bodies were left to rot in the swamp. That night, by torchlight, the infantry began dismantling the section of the causeway now in Dutch hands. The Baron ordered the planks and timbers carried to the mainland. He used the wood to make a gigantic funeral pyre upon which the bodies of more than a thousand enemy soldiers were randomly piled. The carcasses of dead horses were added to the pile. The Baron ordered Prince Herman Lutwaff's body unceremoniously thrown on the top of that gruesome mound. The ashes of these invaders would forever fertilize these fields after the funeral pyre was ignited. The flames would tell the old gods and any future enemies that the Van Weirs would take their just revenge.

Meanwhile, the remaining Germanic commander, Count Victor Alschultz, was competently dealing with his own misfortune. He never expected to meet a fresh water beggar fleet with such firepower. This tenacious type of Dutch seamanship had previously been reserved for the high seas. It was only the steadfastness of his courageous veterans that had driven them off. He ordered the construction of earthen works on Karl's Isle: strong walls that would protect his men from cannon fire. When the walls neared completion, he ordered his soldiers to build shelters, for the weather was turning colder and he had no intention of retreating. He understood the conquest would take longer than expected. Under the cover of darkness, his few remaining boats began bringing reinforcements and supplies across the strait. He used the isle for his main encampment and the stone meeting hall became his headquarters. After two peaceful days passed, without the return of the demon gunboats, he ordered his men to reconnoiter the nearest settlements. Soon his scouts reported that all the outlying islands were abandoned. Alschultz ordered his men to meticulously occupy a new settlement each night. When Werner's soldiers arrived in numbers, he used their boats to deliver the men and munitions needed to establish a strong military presence on each settlement island. Count Alschultz would not withdraw to Germany. In his long career, he had suffered military setbacks, but had never lost a campaign. He sent a rather brazen message to Count Parma in Antwerp, telling him of his “great victory.” He claimed his troops had destroy or driven off a great fleet and wrote Parma of a fictitious storming of the strong fortifications found on Karl's Isle. He informed Parma that he put the imaginary Dutch garrison to the sword. He requested re-supply and reinforcements while sending a less laudatory message to Lutwaff, warning him of the power of the remaining Dutch gunboats. It was three days later his tired dispatch rider returned with the letter unopened. By then, Alschultz knew Lutwaff could only correspond with the devil himself. The Count learned of the calamity from a few survivors who stole a farmer's canoe to make their escape. His rider told him Lutwaff's infantry contingent was intact and awaiting instructions from anyone of higher authority. This time, Alschultz began a hasty journey to a dead commander‘s encampment. He hoped to rally the troops he found as was done with Werner's soldiers. The three columns would become a single army bent on revenge and would be under his sole command. He would gather and nurture this huge force patiently, waiting until the winter cold froze Lake Derick. The solidified lake would become an unobstructed highway to the mainland and the ice would make the Dutch gunboats, all but useless.

As Alschultz journeyed to Lutwaff's camp, the Baron was finding the victories could lead to the loss of his homeland. The disease of overconfidence had infected the army and he was forced to assemble his men on the common green to bid farewell to many of his volunteers. Until this battle, the war with Spain was confined to sieges of towns and cities or guerrilla warfare. This was the first time a Dutch army had stood and fought the enemy on open ground. They had fought gallantly, maybe too gallantly, for his entire army thought they had won the war and many volunteers felt it was time to return home. The Baron knew that was not the case. Jon's boatswain had returned two of the four remaining gunboats to service and used them to scout the enemy's activities. The boatswain had used his artistic talents to sketch some of the fortifications being built. His drawings along with the observations of the gypsies, gave the Baron an accurate picture of the situation on the islands. There would be no immediate attack on the mainland but the settlements were being occupied for the long term. The invaders were recovering from the serious blows his forces had dealt them and were preparing for a new offensive, and the Baron was being forced to bid farewell to most of his allies.

Despite his best arguments, the bulk of volunteers from places like Amsterdam and Frisia had decided to return to their homes. All pledged to return if the conflict re-ignited but most thought the enemy beaten. With two enemy commanders dead, and three great Dutch victories, all thought the enemy lacked the resolve to continue the fight. Good men like the Magistrate and many Friesian Lords felt the Germans would withdraw because of the impossible logistics of keeping their forces supplied. The departure of allies, combined with the losses of many local men in battle, left the army seriously undermanned. If the enemy didn't leave on their own, the Baron had no way of making them go, and little hope of stopping them when they decided to continue their advance. Yet Karl had convinced him “if for no other reason than family honor; no matter what his apprehensions; he must gather the army one last time to properly salute their departing allies with a send-off their heroic service deserved.” As the last of those departing contingents, the Clover Militia, was riding away, the Baron had decided to also allow his local men to rest and recover in their homes but not before candidly addressing the real danger. The gods of his forefathers were on his mind that morning. He wanted again to remind the old gods of the covenant.

On 1 December 1585, The Baron Clifford van Weir spoke to the assembled army in a fatherly tone, “Men of the Droger Land, it is still a time for vigilance, but your courage has kept our homeland safe for the moment. Go home to your families, celebrate your victory, and mourn the loss of our friends and neighbors. When you hear the signal cannon, rally to me, for the enemy across the lake will surely visit us again this winter.” Then, he shocked his Calvinist and Catholic soldiers with his tone, one best associated with a prayer: “The ancient gods of our ancestors will provide whatever we need to maintain the freedom of our land. The ancient gods will keep the covenant made fifteen hundred years ago, but we must all remind them of that eternal pledge.” The ranks of his men stirred because it sounded as if the Great Lord was asking his Christian solders to pray to someone other than Jesus Christ, but the Baron caught himself and added, “Ask those ancient gods to call upon the Son of Highest God, Jesus Christ to assist us.”

It was that same day, the First of December, when Count Alschultz arrived at Lutwaff's encampment, somewhere midway between a German State and the turnip fields. To his delight he found anything but a defeated army. The cavalrymen, who had survived the fiasco at the turnip fields, had already fled the encampment fearing the wrath of any new commander. The infantry, to a man, felt that even one company of pike men could have averted the disaster by screening the withdrawal at the causeway. Yet the thirty-five hundred infantrymen felt they were excluded from the battle. They believed the defeat belonged to Prince Lutwaff and his cavalrymen, not to them. They demanded the campaign continue and had already proven their determination to Alschultz. In the absence of any commander, they had guarded the camp's supplies of food and munitions, forcing the disgraced surviving horsemen and others who fled, to leave for home hungry and empty handed. A quick survey by Alschultz found enough food to feed the entire combined army until he felt the Droger Land could be conquered. He was tempted to immediately lead his new enthusiastic command to Karl's Isle, but decided he needed a good night's rest; it had begun to rain heavily and the Count hoped it would help remove the coatings of ice and snow that had already accumulated on all the roadways.

As historical records show, the Little Ice Age brought not only cooler but more erratic weather to Northern Europe. The rain that began that day became part of one of the most unusual December weather patterns ever recorded in the Netherlands. Such conditions were last seen when the Saxons were forced, by never ending downpours, to flee with their entire populations to England. The Dutch were already adapting to fouler weather; only fifteen years before, in 1570, all of the Netherlands had suffered the “All Saints Flood.” It had been a great storm that came out of the North Sea on All Saints Day and drowned tens of thousands of people. Even Walled cities like Amsterdam and Muyden were flooded. This December's weather would be different; no massive storm, only rain, endless rain.

Some weather historians might point out, that the recent subzero months of December at the time, reverted to the more temperate climate that preceded the Little Ice Age. During the daylight hours the temperatures always hovered but a degree above freezing and barely plummeted below freezing at night. Meteorologists tell us Holland's normal weather, like England's, is influenced by the south-western trade winds following the Gulf Stream currents but it changed that December of 1585. The skies permanently darkened with grey clouds and the rain oddly fell, each and every hour, of each and every day. It was an occurrence that medieval people would have considered the will of God. Today we classify rain as light, moderate, or heavy, but that sheer endless amount of liquid precipitation defies these normal classifications. Noah and his Ark would have been the last to have been acquainted with such rain. Even more extraordinary, the area hardest hit by the deluge was the Great Swamp that divided Holland from Germany.