his young brother, Henry, and Duke Christopher perished, and their army was completely scattered.  The death of his brothers was a great grief to William.  Lewis had for years been his chief support, and the loss of this dauntless champion was indeed a heavy blow to the cause for which he had sacrificed his life.  He was only thirty-six years of age, while Henry, the youngest of the Nassaus, to whom the Prince was deeply attached, was but a youth of twenty-four.

The invasion of Lewis had nevertheless the result of raising the siege of Leyden; but only for a time.  After the victory at Mook the Spanish troops were free to continue the task of reconquering rebel Holland for the king.  On May 26 a strong force under Valdez advanced to Leyden and completely isolated the town by surrounding it with a girdle of forts.  The attack came suddenly, and unfortunately the place had not been adequately provisioned.  So strong was the position of the Spaniards that the stadholder did not feel that any relieving force that he could send would have any chance of breaking through the investing lines and revictualling the garrison.  In these circumstances he summoned, June 1, a meeting of the Estates of Holland at Rotterdam and proposed, as a desperate resource, that the dykes should be cut and the land submerged, and that the light vessels of the Sea-Beggars under Boisot should sail over the waters, attack the Spanish forts and force an entrance into the town.  After considerable opposition the proposal was agreed to and the waters were allowed to flow out upon the low-lying fields, villages and farms, which lie between the sea, the Rhine, the Waal and the Maas.  Unfortunately the season was not favourable, and though the water reached nearly to the higher land round Leyden on which the Spanish redoubts were erected, and by alarming Valdez caused him to press the blockade more closely, it was not deep enough even for the light-draught vessels, which Boisot had gathered together, to make their way to the town.  So the month of August passed and September began.  Meanwhile the prince, who was the soul of the enterprise, was confined to his sick-bed by a violent attack of fever, and the pangs of famine began to be cruelly felt within the beleaguered town.  A portion of the citizens were half-hearted in the struggle, and began to agitate for surrender and even sent out emissaries to try to make terms with the Spanish commander.  But there were within Leyden leaders of iron resolution, the heroic Burgomaster Pieter Adriaanzoon van der Werf; the commandant of the garrison, Jan van der Does; Dirk van Bronkhorst, Jan van Hout and many others who remained staunch and true in face of the appalling agony of a starving population; men who knew the fate in store for them if they fell into the enemy’s hands and were determined to resist as long as they had strength to fight.  At last in mid-September faint hopes began to dawn.  William recovered, and a fierce equinoctial gale driving the