“Aye father, on open ground, always short thrusts with my lance and parry left with my shield, it will not be expected. If possible, keep to my horse, the steed makes me invincible against the footmen.” Jacobus almost recited.
Derick roared, “What if you’re dying horse tosses you into a crowd?”
Jacobus, almost laughing raised his sword hand above his head and started moving it around and around. “I will draw my whirling blade until it’s sound, breaking the wind, can be heard in the heavens by our ancient gods. They will well know I have already taken precious ground from our enemies.”
After his son’s last reply, the great Lord Derick had difficulty holding back a smile as he chastised Jacobus for delaying the column’s advance “so needlessly”.
When they arrived at the rendezvous of Holland’s Army, as the Baron had anticipated, Count Albert was extremely unhappy to see that his contingent was missing its skilled bowmen. While Albert had brought ample bowmen with him, he never felt he had enough archers to soften the enemy formation with a flood of arrows, before the almost ritualistic charge of the heavily armored mounted knights and squires usually decided the outcome of his campaigns. The angry Count immediately designated the Droger Land’s unorthodox cavalry to the ranks of the reserves. As was the right of nobility, the Regent’s action allowed the Baron and his son to decline his invitation to participate, without their horsemen, in that traditional charge of mounted knights.
The night before the battle, Derick excused himself from the festivities at the Regent’s regal quarters for Albert always partied before a conflict. Alone with his son, by the light of a campfire, he drew an outline on the wet soil of the battlefield and shared with his son his vision of the upcoming battle. He suspected their unit would see hard fighting no matter what the Regent thought. Derick wanted Jacobus to command their men should he fall in battle or become separated from the unit during the struggle. More importantly, he also wanted his son to know that if the ancient gods helped them overcome the enemy, there would be no pursuit of the defeated Frisian knights. “They are more our noble kinsmen than the Regent and all his elevated hounds’ men from Holland’s cities. My son, remember these brave Frisians deserve a better fate than a blade in the back or being held for ransom in a dungeon in Brussels. We, and they, do what we know we must.” Jacobus only nodded his head in approval; he did not need to be reminded of such things.
The next day, March 27, 1397, the Baron sat on a small hill overlooking the Village of Vroonen and knew that in such wet terrain, his lighter unit of maneuverable horsemen could play a major role in the battle. As predicted, the Frisians had already sent vicious raiding parties into Holland and Derick received news from the elder Roulfs that the archers and footmen he wisely left to defend the homeland, had successfully resisted the enemy’s first intrusion. The message from the magistrate said there had been no need to retreat behind the Castle’s and the town’s walls. Roulfs was able to ambush and turned-back the intruders in the marshes. The news left Derick free to concentrate on the upcoming conflict.
He knew from past battles that every enemy knight would be mounted on a Frisian charger, the finest war-horses available in Europe. Those magnificent horses would give their Frisian’ opponents a gigantic fighting edge on firm ground. The past three days of rain told him there would be little dry ground on the battlefield, but he scanned the terrain looking for the firmest soil, which is where he knew the enemy would place its mounted men. As he looked toward the farming town of Vroonen, he saw the Frisian infantry drawn up in lines in the field as if protecting the town which had no walls. He couldn’t tell how many knights were within the town because their numbers were hidden by the buildings. On the left side of the town were peat bogs, and on the right a forest of tall pine trees. Every military instinct Theodore possessed told him the majority of the mighty Frisian mounted force would be hidden within the harder ground of the wooded area, and he doubted that the always overconfident Count Albert had any idea that his army was about to be ambushed.
The Dutch foot soldiers were sent forward in a straight line, facing their foes and following their orders to advance until they came within arrow range of the Frisians. Here they paused, and let their own bowmen among them loose a few barrages of arrows, which sent many enemy foot soldiers retreating to the shelter of town. The Frisians did not return fire. The Count, over-confident of a quick victory, sent his entire force of knights and squires forward in a massive attack against the thinning ranks of seemingly retreating enemy infantry. With banners flying and armor shining in the morning sun, the Dutch nobles charged, only to quickly find their rapid advance and momentum slowed by the wet fields, which became muddy as they neared the lower lying town. The hoofs of their galloping horses sank deeply into the rain soaked earth, and their initial momentum slowed almost to a halt. A constant shower of arrows from Frisian archers, well positioned on the roofs of the town, began to thin the ranks of the Dutch knights and squires who became almost immobile in the quagmire of mud. At that exact moment, mounted Frisian knights began filtering out of the drier ground of the tree line, and formed for an assault on the flank of the now almost stationary line of stalled and muddied Dutch knights. It appeared this day would be a certain Frisian victory.
The Baron, without awaiting orders from Albert, led his men into the foray targeting the Frisian knights forming for the assault on the hapless Dutch advance. He hesitated for but a moment, as a torch was passed among the ranks allowing those armed with the primitive firearms to light each gunnes’ tinder. The twenty horsemen armed with the traditional recurved bow of their ancestors were placed at the head of the formation to shower the Frisian formation with arrows as they slowly trotted toward the enemy. The lazy pace of the trotting advance allowed many to empty their quivers with good affect while the slower pace allowed Derick’s lighter horsemen to keep their footing. Their training allowed the formation to maintain a good configuration for what they were about to do. The Frisians, as Lord Derick anticipated, dispatched about forty knights to deal with what they perceived as a mere annoyance of rabble lightly armored commoners on horseback.
This Frisian formation came charging within twenty yards of Derick’s cavalrymen when the archers slowed their horses allowing those with gunnes’ to the front. At twenty feet, Jacobus gave the command to fire and the gunnes were discharged as spontaneously as possible. This was the first use of firearms by cavalry in the Netherlands, and their foes, in chain mail, lacked the heavier plated armor needed for even modest protection against such weapons. The shock of those multiple small iron balls shattered the advancing line of well mounted knights, sending pieces of men and horses sailing into the air as the splattered blood of knights showered their squires riding to their rear. The noise of the discharge alone frightened the remaining enemy horses and riders who survived. The survivors immediately fled the field for they saw half their number killed in a single moment and had watched rider-less and wounded horses stamped in all directions.
Every eye on the battlefield turned to that cloud of black gun smoke which, for a brief time, hid the now more rapid advance of the Baron’s own horsemen having discarded their gunnes and bows and drawn their swords. They charged the open flank of the startled main group of enemy knights near the tree line. The Droger Land’s short but heavy Germanic swords smashed the flank of the Frisians while their bucklers deflected the blades of any who attempted retaliation. The horror of what the main body of Frisian knights had witnessed, and the pressure brought by the force of the Baron’s sharp attack on their flank, caused the most important force of Frisians to flee the battlefield for the safety of the trees. It was Jacobus who halted the Droger Land unit at the tree line. The action by the Baron’s horsemen gave the Dutch knights the time needed to extricate themselves from the mud and: after quickly regrouping; they were able to capture the town from the Frisian infantry. In the frenzy that followed, the Dutch Army set every bui
lding on fire, killing every soldier and inhabitant they encountered, women and children included. That day the Town of Vroonen disappeared from the Dutch landscape forever. Derick saw to it that his Drogerlanders did not participate in the slaughter within the town.
A humbled but grateful Count Albert allowed Derick and his cavalry troop to return home after Holland officially celebrated the victory in Brussels. At this ceremony, held on the parade ground of the regent’s palace, Count Albert for all practical purposes the King of the Netherlands, publicly acknowledged the valor of the Droger Land contingent, and personally provided a generous reward to the Baron, Jacobus and each of their common born horsemen. The Baron was proud of his son’s achievement in creating a unit that had fought so well and even prouder of his son’s numerous displays of courage on the battlefield. Derick also was pleased that it was his son who halted the pursuit of the Frisian knights when they retreated into the forest.
The chatter of the victorious young men on the return journey no longer bothered Derick. In fact, the victory seemed to lessen the usual pain in his leg on the ride from Brussels to the Droger Land. Many times during the trip he told Jacobus that his late mother would have been proud of him. He was now more open to discussing the innovations in agriculture his son had witnessed in Flanders. During a mid-morning break, under the shade of a great oak tree, very similar to the one inscribed on both their shields, he confided to his son that he too had serious questions about the present agricultural system’s ability to feed a population that doubled during his two decades as ruler. The more temperate weather of his childhood was changing and farm production fell drastically in recent years. All too often, he saw the important second crop of grain destroyed by an ever increasing number of late summer storms. Despite hundreds of years of wonderfully warm weather, the Baron Derick van Weir was beginning to feel an almost genetic warning to do something about food production, and maybe his brilliant and brave son might know where to begin. The previous fourteen hundred years of the van Weir Family reign had made their ancestors wary of even the most minor changes in climate. Such vigilance and the Droger Land’s slightly elevated ground allowed them to adjust during catastrophic weather events in the past. In the worse weather conditions, the van Weir family and the inhabitants had retained their land when whole populations of neighboring Frisians and Saxons were forced to emigrate to England or flee to the interior of the European continent for survival. An old family proverb said, “Long periods of good weather hasten the arrival of the worst of times.”
In reality, in those near recent times the Droger Land was not well prepared and many prior lords had stood by helplessly when natural and man-made calamities descended upon the land and people. In 1315 A.D., the Great Famine had devastated all of Northern Europe when the sky was filled with endless rain for nearly two years, and most crops failed or simply floated away. Only good stores of reserve grain and increasingly larger purchases of Baltic wheat had tempered the suffering and had given the residents the strength to drive off the bands of armed outsiders who attempted to invade the realm and steal what little food was available. Derick’s grandfather also told him stories about the arrival of the Black Plague in 1348 and that former Great Lord remembered his grandfather’s personal observations that the well-fed people survived the plague better than those who were starving. The elder lord told him that Jesus Christ and the ancient gods had been merciful to their homeland for the local deaths from the plague were less devastating than elsewhere, but the disease still brought death, suffering and social disorder. The time that followed found merchants, craftsmen and even members of the ruling family tilling the fields of departed farmers. With the advent of seemingly colder and wetter climate upon them, Lord Derick knew his son had thought about such things. He decided after many conversations with Jacobus, to make improving food production within the realm his main priority. He had decided to make war on the basic causes of hunger.
Upon their arrival at home, the Baron declared a three day holiday to celebrate the dual victories over the Frisians to coincide with the usual May Day celebration. The festivities began with a military parade from the town to the castle. The soldiers who had repelled the enemy raiders at home, and the horsemen who had represented the Duchy so well in Middle Frisia, were given a banquet in their honor that was attended by their families. Since it was late April and far removed from the last harvest, the Baron used most of his own reward from the Regent to pay for imported grain and other food stuffs to provide a time of feasting for the entire population during the May Day celebration. On the last day of the festivities, Derick van Weir, the Lord of the Droger Land, summoned every influential member of his domain to the great room of the castle and announced the first land reclamation project in the Duchy’s history. The plan was to first reclaim a two mile wide strip of land from the salty marshes by building a dike in the north and when that was completed to recapture more farm land in the south by building an assortment of dams to reclaim land from the great fresh water swamp. His initial announcement was met with thunderous applause that vibrated throughout the castle. Everyone knew more farmland meant a greater abundance of food and all had heard at least rumors of the success for such projects in other parts of Holland.
When the room quieted, the Baron’s second announcement was met with lesser jubilance. He commanded that every man, women and child would be required to work one day per week moving earth for the construction of walls, which needed to be six foot high in some locations. While the Baron requested their support, he added there would no exemption from the requirement of the one day per week manual labor for anyone, including his soldiers and his own family members. He promised the new land would be divided as fairly as possible among farmers but non-farming families would receive some type of equitable benefit for their labor once the new land became productive. After the Duchy’s only cobbler was caught attempting to avoid his day of work and hung from the town gate, evasion of this responsibility became a non-issue in the Duchy and every resident toiled on their required day. By all accounts the citizens became highly proficient in the strenuous work of moving rocks and soil though some were forced to work in their bare feet after the cobbler’s demise.
Immediately following the meeting, Lord Jacobus was dispatched to the coast to find a qualified person to survey the existing realm as a first step in the project. He was also authorized to find a skilled engineer to professionally supervise the entire reclamation project. Jacobus found a young unmarried surveyor in Rotterdam, Hans Kryk, who could make accurate measurements and was willing to settle permanently in the Droger Land. The young Lord had difficulty finding a reclamation expert because such services were much in demand throughout the Low Countries. After a long search Jacobus contracted the services of Sir Wilhem Wind, a four foot dwarf of noble birth whose temper was as short as his physical stature. Soon all knew the realm had retained the services of an engineer with the reclamation expectations of a giant. University trained and estranged from his noble family, the very squat man would soon become the most detested person in the Droger Land while teaching the population to build some of the strongest earthen dykes and dams in the Netherlands.
Sir Wind began his tenure as chief engineer by ordering the residents to rebuild the first quarter mile of dykes when he found slight imperfections in their initial efforts. Within a few months he had screamed, at least once, at nearly every man and women in the realm including the great Lord himself, but the pace of the construction increased under his earsplitting voice and relentless leadership. When countless subjects complained of the little man’s abuse to the Baron or his son Jacobus, the answer was always the same, “Only this nasty little man has the knowledge needed to build our dykes. Blame God if you must for making his outrageous tongue.” In less than a year, this little, driven man literally forced the people of the Droger Land to surpass the grand expectations of Baron Derick by completing the first wall in the north. Today the dyke they
constructed still holds back the salty waters of what is left of those marshes. While that newly acquired land in the north, now protected by the new dike, was given time to dry, the extremely tired population began building a series of walls in the south to contain the fresh water. At first there was a straight-line simplicity to these dams which adjoined a huge amount of swampland to existing fields. However, Wilhelm felt more farmland could be wrested from the swamp by leaping over the pockets of deeper water and creating a line of agricultural islands, thousands of yards from the mainland proper where nature itself had left occasional patches of higher ground. Working far out in the swamp complicated the reclaiming effort and Wilhem Wind made work even more difficult by demanding higher and thicker walls because of the greater volume of fresh water which surrounded the new islands. Some people began to succumb to the swamps many illnesses but the vast majority had already obtained immunity to most of those diseases. In the end, a dozen irregular shaped islands, somewhat rectangular or triangular were fashioned depending on the depth of the surrounding water. Each site contained the potential for a multitude of farms of good size. During the work the Baron feared the little man was building staging areas to be used by enemy invaders rather than new farmable land for the realm. His anxiety only grew when Wilhem began building walls so far out in the swamp that these new islands could hardly be seen from the mainland. The last three islands dangerously approached the most accessible part of the Great Swamp which led to Germany. When it seemed the construction had finally ended, Wilhem ordered the people to reinforce each of the walls already built with yet another layer of stone and began teaching the Duchy’s craftsmen how to build windmills to pump out any seepage that might endanger the new dry land. The Duchy now had a cluster of islands in the south, in the shape of a fish hook, whose flat land had the potential for immediate productivity. This now dry rich soil could be farmed immediately, unlike the land reclaimed in the north from the marshes, which needed time to desalinate. All that was needed was a fleet of simple flat bottom barges to transport people and goods from the mainland. After touring each of the completed islands, Lord Derick almost reluctantly ordered carpenters to begin building the necessary barges while cursing the little man for pushing the project far beyond where even the great lord wanted to go.
The Dutch Page 2