into the Zuyder-Zee.

The ancient river, broad, deep, and languid, glides through a plain of
almost boundless extent, till it loses itself in the flat and misty
horizon. On the other side of the stream, in the district called the
Veluwe, or bad meadow, were three sconces, one of them of remarkable
strength. An island between the city and the shore was likewise well
fortified. On the landward side the town was protected by a wall and
moat sufficiently strong in those infant days of artillery. Near the
hospital-gate, on the east, was an external fortress guarding the road to
Warnsfeld. This was a small village, with a solitary slender church-
spire, shooting up above a cluster of neat one-storied houses. It was
about an English mile from Zutphen, in the midst of a wide, low, somewhat
fenny plain, which, in winter, became so completely a lake, that peasants
were not unfrequently drowned in attempting to pass from the city to the
village. In summer, the vague expanse of country was fertile and
cheerful of aspect. Long rows of poplars marking the straight highways,
clumps of pollard willows scattered around the little meres, snug farm-
houses, with kitchen-gardens and brilliant flower-patches dotting the
level plain, verdant pastures sweeping off into seemingly infinite
distance, where the innumerable cattle seemed to swarm like insects,
wind-mills swinging their arms in all directions, like protective giants,
to save the country from inundation, the lagging sail of market-boats
shining through rows of orchard trees--all gave to the environs of
Zutphen a tranquil and domestic charm.

Deventer and Kampen, the two other places on the river, were in the hands
of the States. It was, therefore, desirable for the English and the
patriots, by gaining possession of Zutphen, to obtain control of the
Yssel; driven, as they had been, from the Meuse and Rhine.