Now of all the events in the wars of the Low Countries, there was none which had so strongly affected his imagination as the siege of Leyden. The patient fortitude of the besieged, and their deliverance, less by the exertions of man, (though no human exertions were omitted), than by the special mercy of Him whom the elements obey, and in whom they had put their trust, were in the strong and pious mind of Daniel, things of more touching interest than the tragedy of Haarlem, or the wonders of military science and of courage displayed at the siege of Antwerp. Who indeed could forget the fierce answer of the Leydeners when they were, for the last time, summoned to surrender, that the men of Leyden would never surrender while they had one arm left to eat, and another to fight with! And the not less terrible reply of the Burgemeester Pieter Adriaanzoon Vander Werf, to some of the townsmen when they represented to him the extremity of famine to which they were reduced; “I have sworn to defend this city,” he made answer, “and by God's help I mean to keep that oath! but if my death can help ye men, here is my body! cut it in pieces, and share it among ye as far as it will go.” And who without partaking in the hopes and fears of the contest, almost as if it were still at issue, can peruse the details of that _amphibious_ battle (if such an expression may be allowed) upon the inundated country, when, in the extremity of their distress, and at a time when the Spaniards said that it was as impossible for the Hollanders to save Leyden from their power, as it was for them to pluck the stars from heaven, “a great south wind, which they might truly say came from the grace of God,” set in with such a spring tide, that in the course of eight and forty hours, the inundation rose half a foot, thus rendering the fields just passable for the flat-bottomed boats which had been provided for that service! A naval battle, among the trees; where the besieged, though it was fought within two miles of their walls, could see nothing because of the foliage; and amid such a labyrinth of dykes, ditches, rivers and fortifications, that when the besiegers retired from their palisades and sconces, the conquerors were not aware of their own success, nor the besieged of their deliverance!