The original population left the place in mass. No human
creatures were left save the wife of a freebooter and her paramour, a
journeyman blacksmith. This unsavory couple, to whom entrance into the
purer atmosphere of Zeeland was denied, thenceforth shared with the
carrion crows the amenities of Ostend.
* * * * *
From the Preface to the "Rise of the Dutch Republic."
=_141._= THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.
The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the
leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great
commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of the sixteenth and
following centuries must have either not existed, or have presented
themselves under essential modifications.... From the handbreadth of
territory called the province of Holland, rises a power which wages
eighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which,
during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and
binding about its own slender form a zone of the richest possessions of
earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire
of Charles.
... To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an earlier day
is the world indebted for practical instruction in that great science of
political equilibrium which must always become more and more important
as the various states of the civilized world are pressed more closely
together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and
fatal.
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