Siege of Leiden
- For Leiden siege of 1420 see Leiden siege of 1420.
The Siege of Leiden took place between October 1573 and October 1574, with a two-month pause in the spring of 1574, during the first phase of the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo-Spanish War, when Spanish troops under Francisco de Valdés attempted to capture the rebel city of Leiden, South Holland, in the Netherlands. The siege failed when the city received reinforcements and supplies in October 1574, and was liberated.
Background
In the second half of the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation took hold in the Netherlands. Under the authority of the Spanish Catholic king and lord of the Netherlands, Philip II, of the House of Habsburg, whose family had inherited the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands, the new religion was suppressed. The resulting discontent was reinforced by Philip II's centralizing desire and economic unrest. A conflict broke out with the Beeldenstorm, a series of iconoclastic attacks in 1566. Philip II appointed Fernando Álvarez of Toledo, Grand Duke of Alba, as governor of the Netherlands with the mission to bring order.
The Duke of Alba arrived in the Netherlands in 1567 with an army of 10,000 men. His heavy hand backfired, and moderate Protestants and Catholics rebelled against him under the leadership of William of Orange. The prince was one of the leading Flemish nobles, who had been persecuted by the Duke of Alba, and had taken refuge on the estates of his maternal family in Germany. From there he financed the so-called "Beggars of the Sea" and raised an army of German mercenaries from his own pocket, putting them under the command of his brothers. With this army he will start the rebellion against Philip II. In the war that broke out between the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands and Spain (later called the Eighty Years' War), these Dutch rebels took up arms against the king. Initially, the rebels suffered defeats, but in 1572 the Sea Beggars managed to capture Den Briel. From there, other cities in Zeeland and Holland were persuaded, by force or otherwise, to join the revolt. Gradually, more and more cities in the rest of the Netherlands followed suit. Most of the counties of Holland and Zeeland were occupied by rebels in 1572, who sought to end the violent rule of the Duke of Alba. The territory had a high density of cities, which were protected by defense structures and shallow swamps, which could be easily flooded by opening the dikes and letting in the sea.
The Grand Duke of Alba tried to break the resistance using brute force. He used Amsterdam as a base, as it was the only city in the county of Holland that had remained loyal to the Spanish government. That same year, the Duke of Alba and his son Don Fadrique began a punitive expedition against the rebel cities. In the process, Mechelen, Zutphen and Naarden were brutally sacked. Frightened, many cities surrendered without a fight. The Dutch revolt had been put down in almost all of the Netherlands by 1573. Alba's cruel treatment of the populations after the sieges of Naarden and Haarlem was notorious, and only in some parts of Holland and Zealand did resistance persist. The rebels understood that there would be no mercy for them from the Spanish, so they persisted in their fight rather than surrender and decided to resist as long as possible.
The county of Holland was divided in two when Haarlem was taken by the Spanish after a seven-month siege, after which the garrison and prominent citizens were massacred. The Duke of Alba attempted to take Alkmaar in the north, but the The city resisted the Spanish attack, flooding the lands around the city. The Duke of Alba then sent his officer Francisco de Valdés to attack the southern rebel territory, starting with the strategically located Leiden. Meanwhile, due to his inability to quell the rebellion as quickly as he intended, the Duke of Alba presented his resignation, which King Philip accepted in December. The less violent and more political Luis de Zúñiga y Requesens replaced him as governor general.
First siege of Leiden
After the capture of the city of Leiden by the rebels in 1572, it was protected with modern fortifications, so a prolonged blockade was necessary to take it. The capture of the city offered a possibility to end the rebellion, since its capture would separate the rebels from the provinces of Holland (northern and southern) and Zeeland and would make trade between Zeeland's ports and the rest of the provinces difficult. The field master Francisco de Valdés, sent by King Philip to reconquer the region, was helped by Dutch Catholics loyal to the crown with maps and advice. Valdés isolated the city from the outside world with a ring of forts and entrenchments, with the intention of forcing it to surrender by starvation.
The city of Leiden had plenty of food stored for the siege when it began in October 1573. The siege was very difficult for the Spanish, because the ground was too loose to dig trenches, and the city's defense structures were difficult to break down. A rebel army of the Dutch States consisting of English, Scottish and French Huguenot troops defended Leiden. The leader of the Dutch rebels, William the Taciturn, Prince of Orange, attempted to bring reinforcements to Leiden by sending an army to the Netherlands under the command of his brother, Louis of Nassau. Valdés lifted the siege in April 1574 to confront the invading rebel troops, but Sancho Dávila y Daza arrived first and defeated them at the Battle of Mook, where Luis died. Shortly after, the Spanish resumed the siege of Leiden.
Second siege and reinforcements of Leiden
After solving the mutiny of the Spanish thirds in April 1574, induced by the lack of payments, Valdés laid siege to the city in May, taking the forts of Alfen and Masencluse that protected its access. Valdés had already informed Luis de Requesens, governor of the Netherlands, of the possibility of flooding the provinces of Holland and Zeeland, by breaking the dikes that kept these lands protected from water.
During the brief respite from the siege, the Prince of Orange had advised the citizens of Leiden to replenish the city with provisions and hire a larger garrison to help defend the city. However, they ignored his advice, so when Valdés' army returned to resume the siege on May 26, 1574, they were in as bad condition as before. The rebels had previously breached some dikes, so the city was protected by a kilometer of flooded land. The city considered surrendering, as there was almost no chance of reinforcements and supplies were becoming increasingly scarce. The defeat of Louis's army was also a blow to morale.
The Prince of Orange, however, was determined to bring reinforcements to the city, due to the importance of Leiden for the survival of the revolt and the lack of alternatives, which led the States of Holland to accept the proposal. of Orange to flood much of southern Holland to expel Spanish troops. Therefore, he sent a carrier pigeon to the city begging them to resist for three months. To fulfill this promise, he planned to break the dikes to allow the sea to flood the lowlands. The siege could then be lifted using the rebel fleet, and the Spanish would be forced to retreat before the approach of the sea. This tactic had also been used to bring reinforcements to Alkmaar. The damage in the surrounding area would be enormous, which is why the population of the area resisted the breaking of the dikes. However, in the end, the Prince prevailed and the outer dikes broke on August 3. Previously, the Prince's admiral, Louis de Boisot, had assembled a fleet of more than two hundred small flat-bottomed vessels, manned by 2,500 veteran Dutch sailors (the Beggars of the Sea) and mercenaries, carrying a large reserve of provisions for the hungry. inhabitants of Leiden. Shortly after the first dikes broke, the Prince of Orange fell ill with a violent fever that paralyzed operations. More importantly, flooding of the fields took longer than expected due to headwinds. On August 21, the inhabitants of Leiden sent a message to the Prince saying that they had resisted three months, two with food and one without food. The Prince replied, again by carrier pigeon, that the dikes had been completely breached and that reinforcements would arrive soon.
However, it was not until the first day of September, when the Prince had recovered from his ailments, that the expedition continued in earnest. There were more than 25 kilometers between the rebel fleet of reinforcements from Boisot and Leiden, but more than 15 were covered without difficulty. On the night of 10 September, the fleet encountered the Landscheiding, blocking their path to Leiden, and captured it in a surprise night attack. The Spanish had not fortified this important point. The next morning, the Spanish attempted to regain the position, but were repelled with the loss of several hundred men. The dam was breached and Boisot's fleet headed towards Leiden.
Admiral Boisot and the Prince of Orange had been misinformed about the terrain and had assumed that the breach of the dam would flood the country inland as far as Leiden. Instead, the rebel flotilla again found its path blocked, this time by the Greenway Dam, about a kilometer inland from the previous levee, which was still a hand's breadth above the water level. However, once again the Spanish had left the dike practically undefended, and the Dutch crossed it without much difficulty. Due to the easterly winds driving the water back towards the sea, and the increasing area of land covered by the water, the flood was now so shallow that Boisot's fleet was practically stranded. The only route deep enough to advance was a canal that led to a large inland lake called Zoetermeer (a freshwater lake). This canal, and the bridge over it, were strongly defended by the Spanish and, after a brief amphibious fight, the admiral abandoned the strategy. He sent a discouraging message to the Prince, stating that unless the wind changed and they could go around the channel, they were lost.
Meanwhile, in the city, the inhabitants cried out for surrender when they saw that their compatriots had run aground. However, Mayor van der Werff encouraged his citizens to resist, telling them that before surrendering, the Spanish would have to walk over his corpse, and that if the inhabitants were really that desperate he would give them his own arm to help them. they ate it. In fact, thousands of inhabitants died of hunger. To make matters worse, as often happened at that time, the plague appeared on the streets of the city and nearly eight thousand people died from that cause alone. The city only resisted because they knew that, in any case, the Spanish soldiers would massacre the entire population to set an example for the rest of the country, as had happened in Naarden and the other cities that had been sacked. Admiral Boisot sent a dove to the city, assuring them of prompt reinforcements.
On September 18 the wind changed again and, blowing strongly from the west, pushed the sea against the dikes. With the water level rising, the flotilla was soon able to make a circuit around the bridge and canal, and successfully enter Lake Zoetermeer. In October, Dutch patriots led by William the Tacituran destroyed the dikes at four points to form an obstacle that Spanish troops could not overcome. As a consequence of this and the arrival of a strong west wind, the waters rose and the Spanish troops lost their mobility. In one of these four places a monument was erected in memory of what happened, the so-called Groenedijk Monument, in Capelle aan den IJssel. The Beggars of the Sea, under the command of Admiral Louis de Boisot, had ships to successfully use the waters to their advantage. A succession of fortified towns now stood in the path of the patriot fleet, and the Dutch admiral feared even He then achieved his objective, but the Spanish, panicked by the rising waters, barely offered any resistance. Each of its fortresses, now converted into islands, was abandoned by the Spanish royalist troops in their flight, with the exception of the town of Lammen, a small fort under the command of Colonel Borja, located one kilometer from the walls of Leiden.
Lammen turned out to be a formidable obstacle, but the Spanish, adept at land fighting and not amphibious warfare, had despaired of maintaining such an unequal contest against the combined sea forces and the veteran Dutch sailors. Accordingly, the Spanish commander Valdés ordered a retreat on the night of October 2, and the army fled, further frightened by a terrible roar which they heard from the city, and which they assumed to be the men of Leiden breaking yet another dam over they. In reality, part of Leiden's wall, eroded by sea water, had fallen, leaving the city completely vulnerable to attack, if they had decided to stay.
The next day, October 3, rebel reinforcements arrived in the city and fed the citizens with herring and white bread. In the evening, people also feasted on hutspot (carrot and onion stew). According to tradition, an orphan boy named Cornelis Joppenszoon found a pot full of hutspot that the Spanish had had to leave behind when they abandoned their camp, the Lammenschans, in a hurry to escape the rising waters. This day is still celebrated today.
Consequences
Envious comrades in arms accused Valdés of having promised a Dutch lady, Magdalena Moons, with whom he had supposedly fallen in love, not to assault the square, when Valdés never had order or enough troops to do so. This woman, in the Dutch historiographic tradition, is considered the heroine of the siege of Leida.
In 1575, the Spanish treasury was depleted, so the Spanish army could not receive more payments and mutinied. After the sack of Antwerp, the entire Netherlands rebelled against Spain, and consequently Leiden was safe again.
When the citizens were asked by William of Orange what they wanted as compensation for having resisted the siege by flooding their fields, they requested to be the headquarters of a university, which was founded the following year in Leiden and which is still active, being the oldest university in the country. According to an ironic tradition still maintained by the Prince, in accordance with which King Philip of Spain was acting in the name of his lord, against whom he was in fact in open rebellion, the university was endowed in the name of the King.
The October 3rd Festival, called Leidens Ontzet, is held every year in Leiden and includes a festival with an amusement park and a dozen open-air discos at night.The city council gives away herring and white bread to the citizens of Leiden.