The siege of Leiden and its relief by the Dutch fleet

The siege of Leiden and its relief by the Dutch fleet stands in the novel as a test of endurance in which the city’s peril and the surrounding waters became inseparable. As Ben recounts the siege to his companions, a prolonged Spanish encirclement gives way at last to an unlikely route of rescue: the wind turns, the waters rise, and Dutch boats sail across the inundated country to Leiden’s gates. The account ends not with a feast but with a public act of thanksgiving by people who choose to praise God before taking the bread that has just arrived.

Encirclement and the city’s ordeal

Ben describes Leiden as surrounded on every side by the Spanish enemy. Black forts fired into the city, but its people did not surrender. The account emphasizes that resistance became harder as provisions ran out: the grass between the paving stones was gone, and the inhabitants were reduced to eating animals they would not ordinarily have considered food. Plague compounded the scarcity, with people dying in the streets. The siege thus presses the city from several directions at once—military attack, hunger, and disease—while the decision to hold out remains the central measure of its collective resolve.

The crisis becomes most acute when people can endure no more and crowd around Adrian van der Werf in the public square, asking him to surrender. Ben recounts Van der Werf’s answer as a refusal grounded in his oath to defend the city and his reliance on God’s help. He even offers his own body as food rather than consent to capitulation. The moment puts the responsibility for the city’s survival into stark personal terms, but the resistance Ben celebrates is not Van der Werf’s alone: he describes every man as a hero, and includes women and children among those who endured the siege.

Water as danger and route of relief

The siege takes place in a country where land and water are difficult to separate. Much of Holland lies below sea level, and dikes and sluices are needed to keep water within bounds. In Ben’s account, this vulnerable landscape becomes a means of changing the military situation. When the wind turns, water floods the approaches, drowning hundreds of Spaniards and allowing Dutch boats to sail over land rather than follow ordinary waterways. They reach the gates with both men and provisions. The same water that threatens the country therefore opens a passage through the enemy’s encirclement.

The relief also appears in the story of the carrier pigeons. Ben says that pigeons carried letters back and forth during the crisis and helped communicate news of the approaching relief. He has read that they were cared for afterward and, when they died, stuffed and kept in the town hall. His interest in seeing them makes the old siege present for the boys as they visit Leiden: the birds are not only a detail of wartime communication but a surviving link between the besieged city and its later memory. Van Mounen responds with an amused comparison to the legendary goose of Rome, then confirms that the pigeons can be seen in the same building as Van der Werf’s portrait.

Memory, survival, and thanksgiving

The boys encounter another reminder of the siege at the top of a ruined tower. From its wall, the view of the modern city is poor, but the place recalls the watchman who had once stood there while the inhabitants called up to ask whether help was coming and whether the waters were rising. For months, the answer had been that there was no help in sight, only the enemy around them. The repeated question and answer compress the long uncertainty of the siege into a single vantage point: the city watches both its besiegers and the distant waters on which rescue depends.

After the siege, a procession of scarred and starving survivors, led by Adrian van der Werf, made its way to the great church. The people sang an anthem because Leiden was free, before they had tasted the bread brought by the Dutch ships. Their thanksgiving rose among thousands of voices, then changed suddenly into sobbing, until no one could continue singing. The sequence gives the relief a human aftermath beyond the arrival of the fleet: freedom is celebrated by people still carrying the cost of the ordeal, and their first response to survival is communal praise before nourishment.

Place in the novel’s historical imagination

Ben treats the siege of Leiden as one of the defining examples of Dutch courage. When asked to compare it with the siege of Haarlem, he acknowledges Haarlem’s resistance as even more heroic in some respects, while arguing that it had set Leiden’s sufferers an example of fortitude. This comparison frames the two sieges as connected acts of resistance rather than isolated episodes, but Leiden’s particular distinction lies in the conjunction of steadfast defense and relief through the waters.

The episode also links historical memory to the novel’s present-day journey. Ben’s companions hear his enthusiastic account in Leiden, encounter the tower associated with the besieged city, and are directed toward the town hall’s portrait and preserved pigeons. The city’s past is therefore not confined to a history lesson: its buildings and objects give the account visible points of contact. The siege’s decisive reversal, from an encircled city to one reached by Dutch boats, reinforces the book’s wider portrayal of Holland as a place where survival depends on resistance, cooperation, and the management of water.