Brederode.  An attempt to storm the place (December 21) was beaten off with heavy loss to the assailants; so Toledo, despite the inclemency of the weather, had to invest the city.  Another desperate assault, January 31, disastrously failed, and the siege was turned into a blockade.  The position, however, of the besiegers was in some respects worse than that of the besieged; and Toledo would have abandoned his task in despair had not his father ordered him at all costs to proceed.  William meanwhile made several efforts to relieve the town.  Bodies of skaters in the winter, and when the ice disappeared, numbers of boats crossed over the Haarlem lake from Leyden and managed to carry supplies of food into the town, and resistance might have been indefinitely prolonged had not Bossu put a stop to all intercourse between Haarlem and the outside world by convoying a flotilla of armed vessels from the Y into the lake.  Surrender was now only a question of time.  On July 11,1573, after a relieving force of 4000 men, sent by Orange, had been utterly defeated, and the inhabitants were perishing by famine, Toledo gained possession of Haarlem.  The survivors of the heroic garrison were all butchered, and Ripperda and Brederode, their gallant leaders, executed.  A number of the leading citizens were likewise put to death, but the town was spared from pillage on condition of paying a heavy fine.  The siege had lasted seven months, and the army of Toledo, which had suffered terribly during the winter, is said to have lost twelve thousand men.

Alva in his letters to the king laid great stress on the clemency with which he had treated Haarlem.  It had been spared the wholesale destruction of Zutphen and Naarden, and the duke hoped that by this exhibition of comparative leniency he might induce the other rebel towns to open their gates without opposition.  He was deceived.  On July 18 Alkmaar was summoned to surrender, but refused.  Alva’s indignation knew no bounds, and he vowed that every man, woman and child in the contumacious town should be put to the sword.  The threat, however, could not at once be executed.  Toledo’s army, debarred from the sack of Haarlem, became mutinous through lack of pay.  Until they received the arrears due to them, they refused to stir.  Not till August 21 was Don Frederick able to invest Alkmaar with a force of 16,000 men.  The garrison consisted of some 1300 burghers with 800 troops thrown into the town by Sonoy, Orange’s lieutenant in North Holland.  Two desperate assaults were repulsed with heavy loss, and then the Spaniards proceeded to blockade the town.  Sonoy now, by the orders of the prince, gained the consent of the cultivators of the surrounding district to the cutting of the dykes.  The camps and trenches of the besiegers were flooded out; and (October 8) the siege was raised and the army of Don Frederick retired, leaving Alkmaar untaken.  Within a week another disaster befell the Spanish arms.  Between Hoorn and Enkhuizen the fleet of Bossu on the Zuyder Zee was attacked by the Sea-Beggars and was completely defeated.  Bossu himself was taken prisoner and was held as a hostage for the safety of Ste Aldegonde, who fell into the hands of the Spaniards about month later.