impatient for the signal.  The race was obviously to be a sharp one.  The governor-general forbade these violent demonstrations, but Lord Burgh, “in a most vehement passion, waived the countermand,” and his insubordination was very generally imitated.  Before the signal was given, however, Leicester sent a trumpet to summon the town to surrender, and could with difficulty restrain his soldiers till the answer should be returned.  To the universal disappointment, the garrison agreed to surrender.  Norris himself then stepped forward to the breach, and cried aloud the terms, lest the returning herald, who had been sent back by Leicester, should offer too favourable a capitulation.  It was arranged that the soldiers should retire without arms, with white wands in their hands—­the officers remaining prisoners—­and that the burghers, their lives, and property, should be at Leicester’s disposal.  The Earl gave most peremptory orders that persons and goods should be respected, but his commands were dis obeyed.  Sir William Stanley’s men committed frightful disorders, and thoroughly, rifled the town.”

“And because,” said Norris, “I found fault herewith, Sir William began to quarrel with me, hath braved me extremely, refuseth to take any direction from me, and although I have sought for redress, yet it is proceeded in so coldly, that he taketh encouragement rather to increase the quarrel than to leave it.”

Notwithstanding therefore the decree of Leicester, the expostulations and anger of Norris, and the energetic efforts of Lord Essex and other generals, who went about smiting the marauders on the head, the soldiers sacked the city, and committed various disorders, in spite of the capitulation.

Doesburg having been thus reduced, the Earl now proceeded toward the more important city which he had determined to besiege.  Zutphen, or South-Fen, an antique town of wealth and elegance, was the capital of the old Landgraves of Zutphen.  It is situate on the right bank of the Yssel, that branch of the Rhine which flows between Gelderland and Overyssel into the Zuyder-Zee.

The ancient river, broad, deep, and languid, glides through a plain of almost boundless extent, till it loses itself in the flat and misty horizon.  On the other side of the stream, in the district called the Veluwe, or bad meadow, were three sconces, one of them of remarkable strength.  An island between the city and the shore was likewise well fortified.  On the landward side the town was protected by a wall and moat sufficiently strong in those infant days of artillery.  Near the hospital-gate, on the east, was an external fortress guarding the road to Warnsfeld.  This was a small village, with a solitary slender church-spire, shooting up above a cluster of neat one-storied houses.  It was about an English mile from Zutphen, in the midst of a wide, low, somewhat fenny plain, which, in winter, became so completely a lake, that peasants were not unfrequently drowned