From Kampen the island of Urk may be visited: but I have not been
there. In 1787, I have read somewhere, the inhabitants of Urk decided
to form a club in which to practise military exercises and the use of
arms. When the club was formed it had but one member. Hence a Dutch
saying--"It is the Urk club".
Nor did I stay at Deventer, but hastened on to Zutphen with my thoughts
straying all the time to the grey walls of Penshurst castle in Kent
and its long galleries filled with memories of Sir Philip Sidney--the
gentle knight who was a boy there, and who died at Arnheim of a
wound which he received in the siege of Zutphen three and a quarter
centuries ago.
At Naarden we have seen how terrible was the destroying power of the
Spaniards. It was at Zutphen that they had first given rein to their
lust for blood. When Zutphen was taken by Don Frederic in 1572, at the
beginning of the war, Motley tells us that "Alva sent orders to his son
to leave _not a single man alive in the city_, and to burn every house
to the ground. The Duke's command was almost literally obeyed. Don
Frederic entered Zutphen, and without a moment's warning put the whole
garrison to the sword. The citizens next fell a defenceless prey; some
being stabbed in the streets, some hanged on the trees which decorated
the city, some stripped stark naked, and turned out into the fields
to freeze to death in the wintry night.
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