The great achievement belonged to a simple boatman named Adrian.  Whether or not he had read or heard of the Trojan horse is not known, but his scheme was not wholly different.  Briefly he recommended Prince Maurice to conceal soldiers in his peat boat, under the peats, to be conveyed as peat into the Spanish garrison.  The plan was approved and Captain Heranguiere was placed in charge of it.

The boat was laden and Adrian poled it into the fortress; and all was going well until the coldness of the night set the soldiers coughing.  All were affected, but chiefly Lieutenant Hells, who, vainly attempting to be silent, at last implored his comrades to kill him lest he ruin the enterprise.  Adrian, however, prevented this grim necessity by pumping very hard and thus covering the sound.

It had been arranged that the Prince should be outside the city at a certain hour.  Just before the time Heranguiere and his men sprang out of their hiding, killed the garrison, opened the gates, and the castle was won again, Heranguiere was rewarded by being made governor of Breda; Adrian was pensioned, and the boat was taken from its native elements and exalted into an honoured position in the castle.  When, however, the Spanish general Spinola recaptured Breda, one of his first duties was to burn this worthy vessel.

The jewel of Breda, which is a spreading fortified town, is the tomb of Count Engelbert I. of Nassau, in one of the chapels of the great church.  The count and his lady, both sculptured in alabaster, lie side by side beneath a canopy of black marble, which is borne by four warriors also of alabaster.  On the canopy are the arms and accoutrements of the dead Count.  The tomb, which was the work of Vincenz of Bologna in the sixteenth century, is wholly satisfying in its dignity, austerity and grace.

To the font in Breda cathedral William III. attached the privilege of London citizenship.  Any child christened there could claim the rights of a Londoner, the origin of the sanction being the presence of English soldiers at Breda and their wish that their children should be English too.  Whether or not the Dutch guards who were helping the English at the end of the seventeenth century had a similar privilege in London I do not know.

Late one Saturday evening I watched in a milk shop at Breda a conscientious Dutch woman at work.  She had just finished scrubbing the floor and polishing the brass, and was now engaged in laying little paths of paper in case any chance customer should come in over night and soil the boards before Sunday.  I thought as I stood there how impossible it would be for an English woman tired with the week to sit up like this to clean a shop against the next day.  Sir William Temple has a pleasant story illustrating at once the inherent passion for cleanliness in the Dutch women and also their old masterfulness.  It tells how a magistrate, paying an afternoon call, was received at the door by a stout North Holland lass who, lest he should soil the floor, took him bodily in her arms and carried him to a chair; sat him in it; removed his boots; put a pair of slippers on his feet; and then led him to her mistress’s presence.