There could be no doubt that a city so important and thus fortunately secured was worthy to be well guarded.  There could be no doubt either that it would be well to conciliate the rich and influential Papists in the place, who, although attached to the ancient religion, were not necessarily disloyal to the republic; but there could be as little that, under the circumstances of this sudden municipal revolution, it would be important to place a garrison of Protestant soldiers there, under the command of a Protestant officer of known fidelity.

To the astonishment of the whole commonwealth, the Earl appointed Sir William Stanley to be governor of the town, and stationed in it a garrison of twelve hundred wild Irishmen.

Sir William was a cadet of one of the noblest English houses.  He was the bravest of the brave.  His gallantry at the famous Zutphen fight had attracted admiration, where nearly all had performed wondrous exploits, but he was known to be an ardent Papist and a soldier of fortune, who had fought on various sides, and had even borne arms in the Netherlands under the ferocious Alva.  Was it strange that there should be murmurs at the appointment of so dangerous a chief to guard a wavering city which had so recently been secured?

The Irish kernes—­and they are described by all contemporaries, English and Flemish, in the same language—­were accounted as the wildest and fiercest of barbarians.  There was something grotesque, yet appalling, in the pictures painted of these rude, almost naked; brigands, who ate raw flesh, spoke no intelligible language, and ranged about the country, burning, slaying, plundering, a terror to the peasantry and a source of constant embarrassment to the more orderly troops in the service of the republic.  “It seemed,” said one who had seen them, “that they belonged not to Christendom, but to Brazil.”  Moreover, they were all Papists, and, however much one might be disposed to censure that great curse of the age, religious intolerance—­which was almost as flagrant in the councils of Queen Elizabeth as in those of Philip—­it was certainly a most fatal policy to place such a garrison, at that critical juncture, in the newly-acquired city.  Yet Leicester, who had banished Papists from Utrecht without cause and without trial, now placed most notorious Catholics in Deventer.

Zutphen, which was still besieged by the English and the patriots, was much crippled by the loss of the great fort, the capture of which, mainly through the brilliant valour of Stanley’s brother Edward, has already been related.  The possession of Deventer and of this fort gave the control of the whole north-eastern territory to the patriots; but, as if it were not enough to place Deventer in the hands of Sir William Stanley, Leicester thought proper to confide the government of the fort to Roland York.  Not a worse choice could be made in the whole army.