Chater V: The Campaign Against Holland
Preparations for the campaign against Holland were ready by the middle of spring. The combined provincial army was assembled around Utrecht under the command of Antoine de Goignies, a member of the petty nobility of Hainault who had worked his way up through a long military career. The plan called for two armies, the largest would capture Leiden and then The Hague, while a second army was to march south along the Hollandse IJsel and Maas in order to prevent the rebels from using those rivers to inundate southern Holland (as they had done during the 1573 Siege of Leiden). However the campaign had several issues. Not all the damage from the 1573 inundation had been repaired yet, so that the armies had to deal with damaged roads, destroyed bridges, still-flooded polders, etc. along their path. Furthermore morale was low, particularly amongst locally recruited troops, and at every road block disagreements broke out between the Dutch officers and their Spanish attaches.
Meanwhile the rebel leaders, facing what were seemingly overwhelming odds, were contemplating a second inundation before the royalist forces could take control of the sluices, but due to the drastic nature of this measure and the lasting damage of the previous flooding there was much opposition. The swift capitulation of Gouda (the defenses of which were poorly prepared, and the mayor fearful of the damage to his city in case of a prolonged siege and inundation) put further pressure on Orange. Discussions dragged on while the royalist forces were approaching Rotterdam, until a group of staunch Calvinists civilians from Gouda took matters into their own hands and broke the dikes of the Hollandse IJsel in the middle of the night. The royalist army managed to escape the water with minimal loss of life and fled back to Utrecht, although much of their heavier equipment was abandoned. When news reached the other army at Leiden its Dutch leaders called a council of war, and ultimately decided to call off the campaign (despite opposition from the Spaniards and Italians) as they expected the flood to eventually reach Leiden once again, cutting off their ultimate target of The Hague in the process.
The speedy decision of the southern generals to give up the campaign combined with the "suspicious" (in their eyes) origin of the flood, within royalist-controlled lands, proved to be the final straw for the Spanish generals who abandoned the army and returned to Luxembourg. When news reached the governor he fled Brussels in a panic as well, as did Philip II's lawyers and investigators... Shortly thereafter Spanish troops crossed the border of Luxembourg again for the first time since Don Juan had dismissed them the previous year.
