The Dutch (14 page)

Jan quickly made his way to the coast and sailed for Germany. He chartered a sturdy Friesian Boyer with a captain that cared little about political turmoil in Holland. The ship had ample cargo space and a small crew he could bribe to keep his mission a secret. With good winds, the Boyer arrived swiftly at Bremen, but Jan found the available arms were less plentiful than in the past. The shortage made discrete purchases difficult and expensive. All the German Principalities were re-arming against each other and the emperor. At the same time, the German armament industry was receiving massive orders for weapons from the Kings of Sweden and Poland. Prices had skyrocketed and inventories had dwindled since his first trip with Lord Derick. On the return trip to Holland, the cargo hold of the Boyer was barely half full. He was able to purchase only twenty long barrel matchlock Harquebus's for the infantry and less than ten of the new wheel-lock pistols for the cavalry. Worse yet, only one large cannon and two smaller ones could be purchased at any price. While helmets, shields and armor were available, he was forced to haggle for the simplest items such as spear points and arrow heads. Only at the last minute did he obtain enough kegs of black powder to complete his ship's meager inventory. He hoped Brother Clover was having better luck locally.

Brother Clover found the purchase of grain easier than obtaining arms, yet each barge of wheat also carried something that would be helpful in the realm's defense. A brace of wheel lock pistols or a few harquebuses, the primitive musket of that time, were always hidden beneath the grain. Brother Clover was selling Lady Linda's gemstones a few at a time, building good rapport with a number of Jewish merchants. The Jews were more trustworthy than their competitors and some volunteered to help with purchasing arms. After a few months, Bother Clover received word that Jan's ship had returned and the monk's grain boats were needed to move the precious cargo. It took a month to move everything without arousing suspicion. Much of the delay was caused by the one large cannon which had a tendency to swamp the small grain barges.

As the end of Lady Hester period of mourning approached, Robert Roulfs had replaced the check-point with a strong stone Keep. From its walls, which were four feet thick, soldiers and bowman had an excellent view of the last mile of the causeway and the canal. The Keep had many narrow rectangular openings in the walls called curtains and these allowed unseen defenders to launch arrows and shot upon intruders. The fortification also provided good covering fire for the men defending a rolling oak rampart which was built to physically block the road and hide the three newly purchased cannons. The Keep was a strong position but would be vulnerable to an invader's siege guns.

Even with new weapons, the realm could gather only about 400 volunteers to use them. Eighty skilled archers, thirty men armed with a harquebus, fifty professional men-at-arms armed with spears, swords and shields were the core of their force. These warriors were supported by another two hundred farmers and townsmen, armed with long spears and other pike-like weapons including a few hunters who owned their own firearms. The only reserve force was the cavalry unit of now sixty men still armed with their Germanic swords, some bows and an assortment of wheel lock pistols. These forces paled in comparison to what a powerful sovereign could send against them. However, the newly acquired cannons and the small arms could make a defensive battle more balanced if wet weather did not make them inoperable.

The day following Lady Hester's year-long mourning, a large delegation of Franciscan clergy, including the Primate, arrived with a list of demands for the new Baroness. They came to insist on finally meeting Lady Hester van Weir, but the only people they met were their own priests and nuns returning on foot to Holland. It seemed the Baroness had expelled the Franciscan order that morning. Hester had decided it was time to demonstrate her resolve and she knew the unhappy Primate would carry that message to the Royal Court. Yet, not all the Franciscans left, many voluntarily renounced their membership in the order to continue teaching the children of the Droger Land and some volunteered to help defend its borders.

A few days later the Regent sent his own special envoy with an urgent message demanding the Baroness make the long trip to his court in Brussels so they could discuss his choice for protector. The note said he had a noble in mind who “He personally admired and knew was a great and noble knight who would have only her best interest, the interest of her children, and the interest of her people in his heart” as their new Lord Protector. While the envoy waited patiently for a reply, Lady Linda wrote to nearly every noble family in the Netherlands explaining her position and asking for their support and understanding. After a host of scribes made copies, she dispatched riders to deliver her message throughout the Low Countries, and when she knew the riders were safely away, she met with the Regent's special envoy. She asked him to first pray with her in her chapel. After praying for as long as was possible, she gave him a copy of the letter she had sent to her fellow nobles telling him it was the regent's copy. It was not a reply the new regent expected. It read:

My Lords and ladies of Noble Birth:

As you may know my husband Jacobus van Weir, Lord of the Droger Land, and son of the Great Lord Builder Derick, was recently killed in Flanders heroically defending another noble family. The new Regent Count William VI demands that I accept a “Protector” to rule in my husband's place.

The van Weir Family has consistently protected its right to this land for fourteen hundred years and there were many times in our family's legendary history when the wife of a fallen Lord, like me, was forced to rule until a son came of age.

Our family and my growing children need no such protector and I fear the Regent's next command will be to take this “Lord Protector” whoever he be, into my bed chamber, though I have vowed before God to never remarry.

Despite our military losses in Flanders, our family has hundreds of brave, trained and loyal men-at-arms willing to sacrifice their lives to protect the Droger Land and my children's inheritance. We do not covet the land of others and will defend our beloved Droger Land till our last breath.

Sincerely in Justice and Christ,

Baroness Hester Goeden van Weir

The Regent was inflamed and humiliated by her public defiance. He sent a strong force of soldiers to block the coastal entrance way to the Droger Land. He planned on halting all traffic by land and water until the woman came to her senses. The Droger Land quickly adjusted to the Regent's blockade, while farmers found new ways to increase the yield from the fields. The people adjusted their diets to lessen the demands on the stored grain and got unexpected help from the abundance of clover. The people found that the flower heads and seedpods of clover could be ground to produce nutritious flour that could be mixed with wheat and rye grain, reducing the amount needed to make bread and other foods. A brisk black market trade developed with their Frisian neighbors and an amazing amount of goods was carried over the marsh in flat bottom canoes. The bulk of the Duchy's commercial products did not arrive at the coast and the manufacturers were complaining because they needed those supplies of raw materials. While not a single noble family offered assistance, Lady Hester's letter struck a chord with most of the aristocratic class who made their unhappiness with the Regent's actions known in subtle ways. After six months of stalemate the Regent decided to act, but opposition within his own inner circle stopped him from using imperial forces.

Instead, the Regent appointed Lord Louis De Peers the “Lord Protector of the Droger Land,” giving him permission to assume the position by force if necessary. Having accumulated an assortment of fiefdoms across the Low Countries by conquest, intrigue and marriage, the De Peers family had one of the least noble blood lines in Holland. Lord De Peer's seven separate domains were directly ruled by appointed knights who used force to extract the highest taxes in the region from their populations. De Peer's farmers, even in years of bountiful harvests, were constantly hungry because of over-taxation. This “stolen” wealth allowed him to quickly assemble, with the Regent's support, an army of over twelve hundred men (including fifty knights) which he led toward the Droger Land. De Peers had expected to raise a much larger force, but most of the nobles of Holland found reasons to excuse themselves from the expedition. De Peers' biggest disappointment was the lack of enthusiasm in Frisia for his campaign against the Droger Land, their traditional enemy. To his surprise, not a single lord from Frisia, recently conquered and forced to give allegiance to Holland, would participate in the war against their neighbor. Worse yet, those same Lords kept Hester informed of the regent's intentions. Her nearest neighbors sent her assurances that no Frisians would approach her borders with any evil intent until the issue of the protectorate was decided. They remembered that the Great Lord Derick had spared many of them at Vroonen and felt they would repay the debt by supporting his grandson's right to rule.

De Peers assembled his army only ten miles from the entrance way as spies reported he would attack as soon as he received a battery of siege guns, in transit from the Regent's armories. Lady Hester, the three Roulfs, Brother Clover and other lesser commanders had a council of war. Jan had developed a solid defensive plan, which created strong points on the higher ground near the salt deposits when the surrounding land was flooded. It was a good plan, but Lady Hester knew it only delayed the ultimate siege of the town and castle. Sooner or later the enemy would reach droger Land and fire the Regent's artillery at the old walls of the town and castle, which would probably crumble. Even if the walls survived, the stalemate would give the Regent an excuse to bring his Imperial Army into the fray. Either way, the Droger Land would eventually be forced to capitulate. With Jan's plan, the enemy paid a high price but would, in the end, be successful. Lady Hester thanked Jan for his plan but told her commanders that Jesus Christ and the ancient gods of the Droger Land wanted a different strategy. In a fiery voice, she told the assembled men that old gods wanted these cocky high-born invaders whipped before they set eyes upon her castle or their town. She told the assemble men, that in a dream, she had met with those ancient gods where the tallest trees grew in the Lord's Forest. She said the ancient gods had guaranteed victory and no one in the room doubted her vision.

She then summoned the surveyor, who entered the room with a large sketch of the causeway. He was followed by students from his school that carried two model sections of the causeway, which they placed on the great dining table. When the boys left, the men gathered around the models as Lady Hester explained her plan. It called for the three-mile section of the canal to be blocked and staked as near to the entrance way as possible, forcing De Peer's entire army onto the narrow causeway. She said it would bunch his troops together as they advanced on the Keep and the Baroness clarified that the two modeled sections lay within eyesight of the fortification. She further explained that those piles that supported the causeway would need to be pre-sawed around their base and again directly below the water line. The piles and the roadway would be left in place allowing the sheer weight of the causeway to hold the cut piles stable. The crossbeams of the causeway would be inconspicuously weakened from below. Ropes hidden under the water would be tied to each cut pile. When these ropes were pulled, the first section of the causeway would fall, plunging De Peer's harquebusiers into the water, making their weapons useless. The falling second section would dunk De Peers and his force of knights into the marsh. The two collapsing sections of causeway would divide the forward elements of the invading army into three separated formations, all trapped on a road that led nowhere.

Lady Linda told the men that arrows and shot from the Keep would decimate the most forward elements, while cannon fire converging on the other sections would cause havoc. She also told them that the surveyor had found some patches of solid ground to the right of the causeway where bowmen could hide in the tall marsh grass and accurately target the road. Those bands of archers, protected by men wielding long spears, could shower quivers of death upon De Peer's stranded men. Across the canal, protected by the barrier of water, the Droger Land's own harquebus men would specifically target the mounted men with the width of the canal protecting them from retaliation.

The sheer audacity of the Baroness's plan was well received, even by Jan, who imagined his father must have had a role in developing the daring scheme. At Hester's command, his soldiers staked the forward sections of the canal and the local carpenters sawed through the piles and crossbeams on the designated sections of the doomed roadway. It was Jan who designed a simple triggering device that used a giant round millstone to hopefully bring down those two sections of causeway simultaneously. At his command, the camouflage wheel could be rolled into a deep hole that young boys had dug under the water, collecting the salty wet soil a handful at a time. In concept, when the ropes attached to the cut piles and the millstone became taut, the two sections of the causeway should collapse.

As De Peers' army began arriving at the checkpoint, the Regent's soldiers withdrew and it was noticed that less vigilant men were now guarding the gateway. Since De Peers had a reputation for being easily angered and reckless when provoked, Jan suggested attacking his camp soon after his arrival. When word came from the Frisians that De Peers would arrive that afternoon, John chose that night to launch his cavalry attack. Everyone agreed that in the evening, the camp's attention would be focused on the personal needs of noble men rather than security. Hester approved the raid but showed a sharp mind for military strategy. She told Jan that the cavalry could be used for only a single sweep through the camp and ordered him to avoid that part of the camp where archers were quartered, for their quickly strung bows would be the greatest threat to the raiders. The unexpected attack came late that evening and sent unarmored knights and men-at-arms scurrying for safety as fodder piles and tents, including De Peers own quarters, were set ablaze by torches. The attackers killed about twenty men and wounded dozens of others including a few knights. The Drylanders returned without a single causality. The raid so enraged De Peers that he prematurely ordered his attack at first light.