This eBook was produced by David Widger [NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an entire meal of them. D.W.] HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609 By John Lothrop Motley MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Vol. 53 History of the United Netherlands, 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.