were struggling to throw off the yoke of Spain. Leyden was besieged. The town was well fortified. The Spaniards endeavored to starve the city into surrender. They swarmed about the outworks and taunted the famished people as “beggars.” The contest grew daily more hopeless for the besieged. Hundreds were dead of starvation. But the survivors hurled defiance at the Spaniards. They were digging up every green thing, devouring roots of grass, old leather, offal, anything that could in the least aid to sustain life. But “so long as a dog barked in the city, the Spaniards might know they held out.” A few faint-hearted ones pleaded with the burgomaster to yield. But the brave Van der Werff, gaunt, pale, wearied with care and watching, told them they could only surrender when they had eaten him; so long as he lived, the city should not yield.
It was a terrible time. Scores crept into out-of-the-way places to die, that their misery might not be seen by their friends. The Dutch without wished to help their friends within—but the lines of the enemy were too strong. As the last resort, the “Silent Man” ordered the dykes cut. It was done. The country folk abandoned their homes. A fleet of two hundred vessels sailed in over the land fifteen miles. They reached the Landscheiding, a great dyke five miles from the city. Three quarters of a mile nearer the town was a second dyke, the Greenway; within that was the Kirkway.
The rising water frightened the Spaniards. But at ten inches, it stopped. The Spaniards renewed their taunts. Again it rose two feet; the vessels drew nearer: then they lay aground in sight of the famished citizens. Then arose a strong southwest wind—and after days of weary waiting, the fleet was close on the last line of fortifications. It was the first of October. In the morning the “beggars” of the sea would make a desperate attack upon the Spanish hordes.
In the night there came a terrible crash. The sea had undermined the wall. The citizens were filled with panic, fearing an immediate irruption of the enemy. They stood under arms through the weary night.
The morning came. Not a Spaniard was in sight. Fearing a sortie of the hunger-maddened people, they had fled in the darkness. The city was saved by the drowning of the land.
A story is told of Frederick the Great, illustrative of the same indomitable spirit. After establishing the supremacy of Prussia, he was suspected of designs upon the independence of the Netherlands. The Dutch envoy at his court, newly appointed, Frederick endeavored to overawe by a display of his power. A great military review was held; and Frederick, who took a peculiar delight in tall men, caused troop after troop of his gigantic grenadiers to file before the weazened little Dutchman, and asked his opinion. Of each one the envoy said: “Very good, but not tall enough.” Frederick, much nettled at this oft repeated criticism, asked the ambassador what he meant by it. “I mean,” he retorted, “that we can flood our country twelve feet deep!” Frederick left the Dutch in peace.
Though the most terrible calamities of any kind—whether from flood, famine, or earthquake—are to be found in the history of China, yet other nations have shared in disastrous floods. We mention a few:
A notable flood occurred on the coast of Lincolnshire, England, A. D., 245. It seems to have been a high tide, aided by the wind. Three thousand people and many cattle were drowned by a flood in Cheshire, A. D., 353. Four hundred families were drowned in Glasgow, A. D., 758, by an overflow of the Clyde. A tidal wave destroyed several English seaports in A. D., 1014. The Severn leaped its banks in 1483, submerging the adjacent lowlands, and drowning hundreds. Fifty thousand people perished in Catalonia, Spain, during a flood in 1617. In Yorkshire, England, occurred a remarkable outburst of subterranean waters in 1686.
“In September, 1687, mountain torrents inundated Navarre, and two thousand persons were drowned. Twice, in 1787 and in 1802, the Irish Liffey overran its banks and caused great damage. A reservoir in Lurca, a city of Spain, burst in 1802, in much the same way as did the dam at Johnstown, and as a result one thousand persons perished. Twenty-four villages near Presburg, and nearly all their inhabitants, were swept away in April, 1811, by an overflow of the Danube. Two years later, large provinces in Austria and Poland were flooded, and many lives were lost. In the same year a force of two thousand Turkish soldiers, who were stationed on a small island near Widdin, were surprised by a sudden overflow of the Danube and all were drowned. There were two more floods in this year, one in Silesia, where six thousand persons perished, and the French army met such losses and privations that its ruin was accelerated; and another in Poland, where four thousand persons were supposed to have been drowned. In 1816, the melting of the snow on the mountains surrounding Strabane, Ireland, caused destructive floods: and the overflow of the Vistula, in Germany, laid many villages under water. Floods that occasioned great suffering occurred in 1829, when severe rains caused the Spey and Findhorn to rise fifty feet above their ordinary level. The following year the Danube again overflowed its banks, and inundated the houses of 50,000 inhabitants of Vienna.” The Saone