This was no time for smug I-told-you-so’s, Rebecca told herself firmly. “It might very well not have made a difference anyway, Prince. Perhaps, yes. But . . . by the time you could have investigated my warnings—admittedly based on sketchy evidence—Richelieu’s scheme would already have been underway. Could you have called back Tromp’s fleet, in time to save it?”
Frederik Henrik shrugged. “Quite possibly not. But I still would have been better prepared myself. The disaster was not simply a naval one.” For a moment, he glowered ferociously. “What in the name of God were those idiots in Haarlem thinking, anyway? A flotilla of Dutch ships—badly battered—arrives in the waterway leading to the Harlemmermeer, and they do nothing more than gawk at them? Cretins! Why would Dutch vessels damaged in battle not have docked at Amsterdam?”
Rebecca hesitated. She did not want to increase the prince’s gloom, of course. On the other hand, she thought Mike and Gustav would appreciate better information than she’d been able to provide them so far, based on the fragmentary and rumor-laden reports she’d received.
“What exactly did happen in Haarlem, Prince?” she asked. “I know that the Spanish seized the city, but not really how they managed to do it.”
Frederik Hendrik’s lips twisted. “They did it by a combination of reckless impetuosity on the part of that young prince of theirs—the ‘cardinal-infante,’ they call him—combined with Dutch stupidity. Admiral Oquendo, as you may know, was apparently injured in the sea battle. Though not fatally, alas, because he remained in command of the main body of the Spanish fleet. The Spanish prince, Don Fernando, took command of a flotilla made up of a number of captured Dutch vessels. Then, loaded them with Spanish soldiers and sailed into the Zuider Zee, past Amsterdam—in broad daylight, no less!—and landed them on the eastern side of Haarlem. Meanwhile, Oquendo ordered the bulk of his fleet to disembark most of the Spanish troops on the North Sea coast.”
The Prince made a little squeezing motion with his hand. “A pincer attack, if you will. Investing the city from east and west simultaneously, avoiding the very strong fortifications on the south.” He erupted in what seemed a combination of a cough and a laugh. “Exactly the kind of flashy and dramatic maneuver beloved of dramatic young princes and storytellers! And which—in the real world—almost never works.”
Gloomily: “But it worked this time. From what I can determine, the idiots at Haarlem decided that Don Fernando’s flotilla was a relief force. So instead of rushing the troops garrisoning the city itself to meet the disembarking Spanish soldiers—who could have been easily hammered as they were trying to come ashore—they rushed them instead to reinforce the soldiers fighting off the main body of Spanish troops on the western side of the city. That left Haarlem’s eastern approaches effectively unprotected. The prince led his men ashore and more or less stormed into the city. That, of course, panicked the Dutch troops on the North Sea fortifications. Soon enough, everything was chaos, Oquendo’s troops surged forward, and our soldiers either fled or surrendered.”
He threw up his hands. “My whole life, spent mastering the genuine art of war! And—now this! A stripling Spanish prince makes a mockery of it all with something that belongs nowhere outside of a troubadour’s tale!”
Rebecca swallowed.
“Was there . . . ah, a massacre thereafter?”
Frederik Hendrik took a deep breath, and then abruptly shook his head.
“No massacre. Neither there nor, so far as I have been able to determine, anywhere the Spanish have overrun us. In fact—”
He gave her a smile which, for the first time, was not simply sardonic. “They’ve taken Rotterdam and The Hague also. As of three days ago.”
Rebecca felt herself grow tense. By far the largest Jewish community in the United Provinces was in Amsterdam. But there had also been, for decades, a small Jewish population in The Hague. And while Rebecca did not consider herself “Jewish” in the sense of that term which was the most common one in the Europe of her day—religiously observant—the ethnic sense of the term was already gaining ground. The Spanish Inquisition had begun that process, with their obsession over “secret Jews” and maintaining the “pure blood” of Christian Castile—limpieza, as the Spanish called it.