Along the walls of Fort Liefkenhoek.

It was a dark and stormy night in the first days of November of the year 1599 when the Spanish sentry in Fort Liefkenhoek on the Flemish side of the Scheldt sounded the alarm, urgent drumming woke the sleeping garrison and each man there, commander-in-chief and ordinary soldier alike, took up their posts on the fortress's walls.

The waves of the Scheldt were running high and often disgorging flecks of foam in the face of the shivering Southerners over the ramparts. A northeasterly wind whistled sharply down from the "Provinces", and the Spaniards had already known for a long time that it was seldom that anything good came to them from that quarter.

In Fort Lillo as well, on the Brabant side of the river, the sticks of the drums were whirling and the horn was being sounded. One could hear quite clearly over the noise of the storm and the waters tossed by a tempest the sound of far-off cannon fire, which could only be emanating from a battle at sea at the mouth of the Scheldt.

The sea beggars were up to their old tricks again.

What did this race of amphibians care about darkness and storms? Were not nightfall and stormy weather their best allies? When had a sea beggar ever been afraid of a stormy sea and darkness when it came to annihilating the enemy, to outmanoeuvring his deadliest enemies, those who had laid waste to and oppressed his homeland won back from the waves.

The war, however, had taken a terrible turn for the worse.

This coming and going of the belligerents had lasted now for two and thirty years and there was still no foreseeable end to it. The sowing of the dragon's teeth had yielded a generous harvest—men of iron had indeed sprung from the blood-drenched earth and even women had had to forget what kindness and clemency were. There was now a younger generation who, for this very reason, did not long for peace because they had never known what peace was.

And if the violence of the war had worsened on dry land, it was even more horrendous at sea. At least on land prisoners could be exchanged or ransomed—towns, villages and hamlets could spare themselves burning and sacking by buying off would-be attackers. At sea, however, there were no pardons and no ransoms. It was held to be merciful to put enemy prisoners to the sword without further ado or to hang them from a yardarm and not to slowly torture them to death in the cruellest way possible or to nail them to the deck and sink them along with their captured ship.

Commanding officers and ordinary soldiers on the walls of Fort Liefkenhoek listened with rapt attention to the cannon fire and shared their opinions on it. One person would have one view on the parties to the skirmish, someone else another, but, finally, whispered at first, then louder and more surely, the word went from mouth to mouth among the soldiers:

"The black galley, the black galley again!"

Each of them spat out the same message with a tone between anger and uncanny dread:

"The black galley!"

Towards one o'clock in the morning the wind died down and the cannons too fell silent. Twenty minutes later there was a sudden burst of flame in the far, far distance that left the dark water looking blood-red from an equally bloody flash of lightning. The garish illumination flickered over hundreds of bearded and wild faces on the walls of Forts Liefkenhoek and Lillo and, half a second later, the dull thud of a huge explosion succeeded to the lightshow, with which the skirmish appeared to be at an end, in the same way that a tragedy ends with a catastrophe. No more signs of life could be seen or heard to hint at the continuation of the struggle. Although the garrisons of the Spanish fortresses waited patiently, listening out for a long time, they heard no more signs of gunfire.

"Well, and what do you think about all this, Senyor Jeronimo?" the commandant of Fort Liefkenhoek asked one of his captains, a gaunt elderly man with grey hair and a grey beard, covered with scars from head to toe.

The soldier thus addressed, who until then had been leaning on the parapet a little away from his comrades in arms, shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't ask me about it, sir. By God and the Virgin Mary, I gave up racking my brains a long time ago over what this war has in store for us. My armour has become attached to my skin and I'll hold my ground till Judgement Day, but that's as much as I will do."

"You are very brusque, Senyor," said the commander, who was a much younger man than the old warhorse and had only recently arrived in the Netherlands from Castile to take up the post of governor in this fort on the Scheldt.

"Coronel," said Captain Jeronimo, "for many a long year now I have clung to my position on this lump of earth and watched the waves wash over it. You are young, coronel, but your predecessor was also young and a nobleman. He too stood here next to me, in the same place that you yourself are standing now, full of youthful dreams and hopes of victory. Now he lies down there below the waves and the one who was here before him was killed by a bullet near Turnhout—he too dreamed of returning crowned by victory to his castle on the Jarama, back to his young wife—bah! And now I can cast my mind back to the end of the year 1585 when I got back from Madrid—then I too believed in victory and honour in this war. I have ceased to believe in those things and you will as well, mi coronel, if God lets you live."

"You have a morbid imagination, captain! But tell me, you were in Madrid in that ever memorable year?"

"Aye, that I was."

"In that glorious year that the great prince won back Antwerp for us?"

"Yes."

"So you entered the town with Alexander Farnese as a victor? Oh happy man!"

"No," said the old soldier darkly. "I did not figure in the victory procession; I had been entrusted with a different task, a task that made other people in the camp extremely jealous of me. I was the messenger that the brave prince sent to Don Felipe—may God have mercy on his soul—to announce the town's surrender."

"You? You, Captain Jeronimo, were permitted to take such a message to the king? Oh thrice happy man! Please tell us about it as we cannot yet withdraw from manning the walls."

The other officers of the garrison had gradually drawn closer to the captain and the commandant so that now, as attentive listeners, they formed a circle round them. It was only on rare occasions that Jeronimo could be persuaded to hold forth.

"What is there to say?" the captain began. "In the night of 4 to 5 September 1585 I reined in my breathless nag in front of the castle of the king in Madrid—I am a native of that town and I can tell you, gentlemen, that my heart beat faster when I heard once again the rushing waters of the Manzanares. I had often enough dreamt not long beforehand in the field hospital where I lay in a fever of the roaring of this river. And, having reached my final destination, both the good tidings I had brought with me and the expectation of a fabulous reward that appeared to me in dreams drove my blood more strongly through my veins. Darkness and a deathlike silence lay over the castle and the town itself. I subsequently learned that there had been a great auto da fe the day before and that the inhabitants of Madrid were sleeping it off: everyone was asleep, including King Philip himself. The watch held their pikes to my chest just as my exhausted steed collapsed under me in the courtyard. I was as out of breath from that last wild ride as my horse, but I still had sufficient strength left to pant: "Letters from Flanders! Letters to the King! Letters from Prince Alexander of Parma! Victory!"

The weapons of the sentries were lowered and courtiers came up to ask me questions and then I was led through the halls of the castle to the bedchamber of my Lord and Master. My heart trembled like my weary limbs. My head was in a whirl when I came to kneel beside the king's bed and handed him the great prince's letter. Propped up on his elbows, King Philip left to one side his writing and skimmed through the letter with his sharp ascetic eyes—his chamberlain held the golden lamp so he could see properly. I will never forget the king's face, nor the trembling that overcame his sallow livid features. He sat up in bed, gaunt and feeble, and uttered a shout that was almost a cry:

"Antwerp has surrendered! Antwerp has surrendered!"

And the lamp in the courtier's hand began to tremble too. The king got out of bed; against all the rules of court etiquette he leaned on my shoulder, the shoulder of a simple soldier, covered with the dust and sweat accumulated along the way. His noble retinue threw a cloak over his shoulders. The fact was that such glad tidings had not reached the ears of the king since the news of the victory at Lepanto. He hotfooted it down the castle corridors to the door of his favourite daughter, Donya Clara Isabella Eugenia, knocked at the door (for what did His Catholic Majesty care about etiquette at that moment in time?), at the door of a princess, opened it slightly, shoved his head into the room and whispered to his still sleepy daughter, alarmed at the intrusion:

"Antwerp has surrendered! Antwerp has surrendered, Donya Clara!"

The castle became a hive of activity as the great news spread…

"And what about you, Jeronimo?" asked the commander of Fort Liefkenhoek.
"What was your reward for such joyful and glorious tidings?"

"Yes, what was your reward, Jeronimo? Were you dubbed a knight of the order of Calatrava?" asked the other officers.

"No, I'm not a knight of the order of Calatrava," answered the old war horse. "And as far as material rewards go, His Catholic Majesty hung a golden chain around my neck and gave me a commission in his army as a colonel."

"Ah!" the commander said, and the other officers pushed nearer.

"I know," said the old warrior, "I know full well what that look means, mi coronel; it means: So why are you here now as my subordinate, as a poor half invalid mercenary? Isn't that what you're thinking?" As he asked this question he looked round the circle of men around him. "Well, I'll tell you, being as I'm getting to that part of my story. Prick up your ears youngsters. There might be a lesson in this for you. On 13 July 1591 Prince Alexander Farnese set up camp before Fort Knodsenburg, opposite Nijmegen, in order to lay siege to it, but Gerhard de Jonge, the Dutch commander, was a brave man and we had our bloody work cut out with him. To give Alexander a scare Maurice of Orange moved up from Arnhem to the Betau and proceeded to set up an ambush after reconnoitring the area around our camp. Seven of our ensigns, Spanish and Italian lancers, rode out against the enemy. Doughty knights were among them, I can tell you: Francesco Nicelli, Alfonso Davalos, Padilla, Jeronimo Caraffa and Decio Manfredi to name but a few. I was bearer of the prince's standard that day—a plague on it! Up and at the enemy we were and the enemy withdrew in haste until such time as we fell into the ambush and were wiped out to a man. God in heaven, I had already sustained thirty war wounds which scars all over my body bore witness to and I had bled at every close encounter, but this time, this time, as all my companions lay dead and bleeding on the field of battle, I alone escaped uninjured. The Duke of Parma's victorious standard, however, which I had been carrying, was captured by the enemy! It bore an embroidered figure of Christ with the motto: Hic fortium dividet spolia or He will apportion the spoils to the bravest. My honour as a soldier was lost. The following day the golden chain Don Felipe had given me in token of my sterling service was torn from off my neck, another more fortunate inherited my post and I was allowed to lose myself in the ranks as an ordinary mercenary. I changed my name and re-enlisted in a German regiment. Overnight I became grey and bent and assumed the rank of captain again under my new name and so I am your subordinate, commander, and your comrade, gentlemen. Don't turn away from me!"

The commander of Fort Liefkenhoek reached out his hand to the storyteller and shook it warmly in silence; the other soldiers present pressed forward to reach out their hands to him too.

"Enough!" said the veteran. "What difference does it make, for it all comes down to the same in the end. I have witnessed the eclipse of many reputations and much honour and fame. King Philip the Second sleeps in the Escorial, the great prince Alexander Farnese lies in Parma. Where is Fernando Alvarez de Toledo now? Where is our redoubtable enemy, William the Silent?"

"Quo pius Aeneas, quo divus Tullus et Ancus? Where is god-fearing Aeneas? Where are the divine Tullus and Ancus?" laughed a young ensign, who was fresh out of upper school in Salamanca; but no-one paid attention to him, and Captain Jeronimo continued. "Enough, comrades. Let each man do his duty and think himself an honest man. Let the company stand easy, mi coronel, or we'll all be down with red dysentery tomorrow. That nasty business down there on the estuary has been put an end to now—and His Catholic Majesty Philip the Third and his Genoese Excellency, Signor Federigo Spinola, have one good ship less. Let us go to bed, colonel, and tomorrow you can find out more details."

"Is that what you think, prophet of doom? Your terrible misfortune has sapped your courage. Pull yourself together, Jeronimo."

The captain just shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, so be it then," said the colonel. "Give the signal to leave the walls. Afterwards I'll expect you all to come to my quarters, gentlemen, for a glass of wine. None of you will be getting any sleep tonight. Have courage, gentlemen, and long live Spain!"

The officers repeated their commander's last words, but somewhat mutedly.
Then the drums beat the retreat and the troops withdrew from the walls of
Fort Liefkenhoek.

The commander himself held back for a while and, sighing, leant his elbows on the parapet, cupping his chin in his hands. He stared out in this wise over the waters and gazed at the night and murmured:

"He's right. This war has a curse on it. For fourteen years now the Spanish flag has flown yet again on these walls and on the walls and the towers of Antwerp, but are we for all that one step nearer in our conquest of this heroic stiff-necked people? How many men have fought and bled for this tiny flooded lump of clay! How many men have struggled to possess this wilderness! Like dazzling stars shining through the mists of time the names appear of both friends and foes, names like Alexander Farnese, Mansfeld, Mondragone, Johannes Pettin of Utrecht, Aldegonde, Gianibelli, Giovanni Baptista Plato, Barrai, Capisucchi, Olivera, Paz, La Motta, Delmonte and a hundred others. But thousands of nameless fighters lie buried under the sand and under the waves—how many more will sink there without leaving a trace?"

The garrison had long since disappeared from the walls, and all there was to hear from the top of Fort Liefkenhoek were the calls and the tread of the night watch and the roar of the waves and the once again gathering storm.

The colonel circled his walls one more time and encouraged the twice as numerous as usual night watch to keep a good lookout; then he went down to his quarters where his officers, in response to his invitation, had all come together. Only Captain Jeronimo was missing, as was his wont when his comrades-in-arms gathered socially. They left him to his own devices, were sorry that he wasn't there and laughed and joked about his prophecies.

The captain had indeed been right! His Catholic Majesty and Federigo Spinola of Genoa had lost a valiant ship during that stormy night. The next morning charred remnants of the Immaculate Conception were washed up on the dunes of South Beveland at the feet of heretics, and the evening tide carried more than one mutilated body in Spanish uniform down to the walls of Fort Bats. Captain Jeronimo's grim prediction had been proved true—the sea beggars had emerged victorious from the previous night's skirmish.