“We have hurt and slain very near eight hundred,” said Sir Roger Williams.”  We had not powder to fight two hours.  There was a breach of almost four hundred paces, another of three score, another of fifty, saltable for horse and men.  We had lain continually eighteen nights all on the breaches.  He gave us honourable composition.  Had the state of England lain on it, our lives could not defend the place, three hours, for half the rampires were his, neither had we any pioneers but ourselves.  We were sold by their negligence who are now angry with us.”

On the 5th August Parma entered the city.  Roger Williams with his gilt morion rather battered, and his great plume of feathers much bedraggled-was a witness to the victor’s entrance.  Alexander saluted respectfully an officer so well known to him by reputation, and with some complimentary remarks urged him to enter the Spanish service, and to take the field against the Turks.

“My sword,” replied the doughty Welshman, “belongs to her royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, above and before all the world.  When her Highness has no farther use for it, it is at the service of the King of Navarre.”  Considering himself sufficiently answered, the Duke then requested Sir Roger to point out Captain Baskerville—­very conspicuous by a greater plume of feathers than even that of the Welshman himself—­and embraced that officer; when presented to him, before all his staff.  “There serves no prince in Europe a braver man than this Englishman,” cried Alexander, who well knew how to appreciate high military qualities, whether in his own army or in that of his foes.

The garrison then retired, Sluy’s became Spanish, and a capacious harbour, just opposite the English coast, was in Parma’s hands.  Sir Roger Williams was despatched by Leicester to bear the melancholy tidings to his government, and the Queen was requested to cherish the honest Welshman, and at least to set him on horseback; for he was of himself not rich enough to buy even a saddle.  It is painful to say that the captain did not succeed in getting the horse.

The Earl was furious in his invectives against Hohenlo, against Maurice, against the States, uniformly ascribing the loss of Sluy’s to negligence and faction.  As for Sir John Norris, he protested that his misdeeds in regard to this business would, in King Henry VIII.’s time, have “cost him his pate.”

The loss of Sluys was the beginning and foreshadowed the inevitable end of Leicester’s second administration.  The inaction of the States was one of the causes of its loss.  Distrust of Leicester was the cause of the inaction.  Sir William Russell, Lord Willoughby, Sir William Pelham, and other English officers, united in statements exonerating the Earl from all blame for the great failure to relieve the place.  At the same time, it could hardly be maintained that his expedition to Blanckenburg and his precipitate retreat on the first appearance of the enemy were proofs of consummate generalship.  He took no blame to himself for the disaster; but he and his partisans were very liberal in their denunciations of the Hollanders, and Leicester was even ungrateful enough to censure Roger Williams, whose life had been passed, as it were, at push of pike with the Spaniards, and who was one of his own most devoted adherents.