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INTRODUCTION
FAIR LEYDEN
I am glad that Mrs. Seaman has written this story. Americans cannot know Leyden too well, for no city in Europe so worthily deserves the name of Alma Mater. Here, after giving the world an inspiring example of heroism, modern liberty had her chosen home. The siege, so finely pictured in this story, took place about midway in time between two great events—the march of Alva the Spaniard and his terrible army of "Black Beards" into the Netherlands, and the Union of Utrecht, by which the seven states formed the Dutch Republic.
This new nation was based on the federal compact of a written constitution, under the red and white striped flag, in which each stripe represented a state. Under that flag,
