Norwich bulletin., 1916-08-02
THE. WAR PRIMER By National Geographic Society

Schouwen, off whose shores a run ming seanght between six German tor pedO boats and a small fleet of British light cruisers occurred, is the subject of the following bulletin issued by the National Geographic Society from Washington:
 With six other small islands of the Scheldt and Maas (AIeuse) delta, SchauWen and narrow strip of the mainland constitute the province of Zealand in the kingdom of Holland. The island, which has recently been thrust into the news of the day by the clash of small hostile craft off it's shores, lies 100 miles due east of the English seaport of Harwich and 160 miles northeast of London. It is all most invisible from the west for most of the land is below sea level and only an occasional church spire peeps above the dykes which shut out the waters of the North Sea. Behind those dykes, however, the sea-clay is extremely fertile, and large crops of wheat rye, barley and flax are raised. In addi- tion to their agricultural and dairy interests, the people are proftabIy en- gagged in the manufacture of linen, in shipbuilding, salt refining and yarn spinning.
 "Schouwen is connected with the more easteriy island of DUiveland by a dam across the Dykwater, while three
  ed with the mainland by naturally formed mud banks. Seven hundred years ago the seven islands were sub divided into many smaller bodies of land, but the silt from the AIaas and the ScheIdt has served to weld these fragments together, and the process is continuing through the centuries. SchOuwen is now 15 miles long, with an average breadth of five miles.
 The largest town on the island is the quaint old seaport of Zieriksee with population of 1000. During the rise of the Dutch Republic Zieriksee played an interesting role, suffering like the rest of the cities of this un- happy land under the six years of tyranny perpetrated by the hangman of the Netherlands the Duke of Ava whose boast tEat during his career he had caused the execution of 18000 men would seem fully to justify Motley's estimate that such an amount of stealth and ferOcity, of patient vim dictiVeneSs and universal blOOdthirst- mess has never been found in a savage beast of the forest and but rarely in a human being
 Tt was during the regime of Alva's more moderate successor, the Grand Commander Requesens, that jSchOuwen fell before the Spaniards. The man ner of it's capture was almost as novel as the manner in which the Siege of Leyden, one of the most memorable in all history was raised. In the latter case, it will be remembered that Ad- miral BOisOt sailed a rescue fleet to the inland city over land which had been flooded by the tempest that drove the waters through opened dykes. In the case of the capture of Schouwen the Spaniards, 1,700 in number, having been told by traitors of a way to avoid the defenders fleet, marched breast high through the waters in the dead of night and gained the shore of Duive- land, although during their advance they were beset by the Flemish island CTS who from their boats attacked the foreigners with daggers, harpoons and boathoOlIs. After the fall of DuiVe- land all Schouwen was taken except Zieriksee, to which the islanders fled. The town held out against the besieg- CTS for several months, but after the futile attempt of the gallant Admiral BoisOt to bring relief by sea, an at tempt in which this deliverer of Ley den lost his life, the garrison yielded. This gave the enemy their much needed fOOthold on the ocean, from which they could make some headway against those terrors to Spanish commerce, the Sea-Beggars.
 Almost immediately after the fall of Zieriksee the Spanish soldiers mutinied because they had not been paid, and the island was soon aban- dOned. the mutineers swaTning through all Zealand and Brabant and commit ting Outrages even more horrible than those to which the distracted people had been subjected under the organ ized barbarity of A1va-'