BOOK ONE,

The Army of the Emperor and of the King of Spain stopped by the waters in the Veluwe.

took Amersfoort: for having tried to take the Gooiland, and overcome the sand mountains, the enemy cavalry found itself stopped by the waters and the marshes, without it being possible for it to pass further. The Dutch have always defended themselves from their enemies as much by waters as by weapons: I will bring examples of this elsewhere from Tacitus. I only wanted to speak here of the moderns; and perhaps with some reason; the expense that Holland makes today against the Ocean equaling that which it makes against the enemies; from which it can nevertheless have relief, if it finds itself too pressed by the latter. Thus recently, as I have said, by breaking its dikes it opposed the sea to the Croats who were ravaging its countryside, and made a deluge, which gave limits to the Empire by stopping the troops of the Emperor. Janus Dousa wrote these verses on the siege and the happy deliverance of Leiden, which will not be out of place here, and of which I do not wish to spoil the grace with my translation.

The Iberian soldier surrounds Leiden of the Batavians:
But he is surrounded in turn by the Batavian sea.
There is no need for swords and iron-rigid arms:
The waters alone fight for the Batavian.
The Batavians and the hero of Nassau abandoned the fields;
Yet the enemy did not take any of these lands from them.
Reason found a way to drive far away without blood
The hostile hands and the Hesperian yoke.
Dismiss your fears, Spaniard, flee, and do not look back at the lands,
For which the Ocean fights, and God Himself.

The enemies themselves have acknowledged this wonder, and one found in the quarters of General François Valdez after their retreat a plan of the circumvallation, in the margin of which it was written: (a) Goodbye City! goodbye redoubts, guardhouses, and forts (for they were abandoning 62) which we are quitting because of the waters, and not for the strength of the enemies. Let us call a third witness, an Historian, against whom there is no exception. The terrain of Leiden, he says, and of the surroundings, is watered by rivers that make several contours there. The Rhine passes through the City. The IJssel and the Meuse descend, one to Rotterdam, the other to Gouda; but from there they come to Leiden also by canals that have been dug. The embankments of these canals and of all the others have been raised so that the surging sea does not throw itself through them into the countryside. The Dutch then, after having made their plan known to those in Leiden by means of pigeons that they released, opened the dikes that they had kept closed for so long and with so much expense. The IJssel, the Meuse, and the Ocean flooded the countryside all at once, and covered entire villages, causing damage of more than two hundred and eighty thousand crowns: the Spanish camp was submerged, and the ships being able to sail where recently one saw chariots rolling, the Dutch came from forty leagues away to bring the besieged relief of men and provisions without danger: the Spaniards could have taken pleasure in seeing, as formerly at the spectacles of Rome, a sea that was born among the trees and the forests,