After the conclusion of the sack and massacre of Naarden, Don Frederic had hastened to Amsterdam, where the Duke was then quartered, that he might receive the paternal benediction for his well-accomplished work.  The royal approbation was soon afterwards added to the applause of his parent, and the Duke was warmly congratulated in a letter written by Philip as soon as the murderous deed was known, that Don Frederic had so plainly shown himself to be his father’s son.  There was now more work for father and son.  Amsterdam was the only point in Holland which held for Alva, and from that point it was determined to recover the whole province.  The Prince of Orange was established in the southern district; Diedrich Sonoy, his lieutenant, was stationed in North Holland.  The important city of Harlem lay between the two, at a spot where the whole breadth of the territory, from sea to sea, was less than an hour’s walk.  With the fall of that city the province would be cut in twain, the rebellious forces utterly dissevered, and all further resistance, it was thought, rendered impossible.

The inhabitants of Harlem felt their danger.  Bossu, Alva’s stadholder for Holland, had formally announced the system hitherto pursued at Mechlin, Zutphen, and Naarden, as the deliberate policy of the government.  The King’s representative had formally proclaimed the extermination of man, woman; and child in every city which opposed his authority, but the promulgation and practice of such a system had an opposite effect to the one intended.  “The hearts of the Hollanders were rather steeled to resistance than awed into submission by the fate of Naarden.”  A fortunate event, too, was accepted as a lucky omen for the coming contest.  A little fleet of armed vessels, belonging to Holland, had been frozen up in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam.  Don Frederic on his arrival from Naarden, despatched a body of picked men over the ice to attack the imprisoned vessels.  The crews had, however, fortified themselves by digging a wide trench around the whole fleet, which thus became from the moment an almost impregnable fortress.  Out of this frozen citadel a strong band of well-armed and skilful musketeers sallied forth upon skates as the besieging force advanced.  A rapid, brilliant, and slippery skirmish succeeded, in which the Hollanders, so accustomed to such sports, easily vanquished their antagonists, and drove them off the field, with the loss of several hundred left dead upon the ice.

“’T was a thing never heard of before to-day,” said Alva, “to see a body of arquebusiers thus skirmishing upon a frozen sea.”  In the course of the next four-and-twenty hours a flood and a rapid thaw released the vessels, which all escaped to Enkhuyzen, while a frost, immediately and strangely succeeding, made pursuit impossible.