Strength: 5
Type: Ranged Unit
Flavor Text: Behold, divine water rises and becomes an overflowing flood.
Artwork: The Breach of the Saint Anthony's Dike near Amsterdam by Jan Asselijn (1651)
About the card:
Water is a much more powerful weapon than anything men could make until the modern era and even now it's a close contest. Since people have known such unstoppable forces they have sought to control them building dikes and dams wherever they could to hold back rivers and ocean surges. But in the Netherlands this is on a different level entirely, since most of the country is below sea level, the Dutch have spent all of history building dikes and pushing the sea back inch by inch and farming on the reclaimed land. Sometimes strong storms will break the dikes and sometimes, especially in times of war, they are broken on purpose. Either way when the dikes break, the destruction to friend and foe alike is unparalleled (see also Omen).
After three months of siege rations and many thousand of plague and starvation deaths, the City of Leiden was at its breaking point. The Spanish besiegers had previously massacred Haarlem and Naarden after their sieges broke, so the Leideners knew they had to hold out until a relief army could arrive. The Dutch Rebel's leader, William of Orange, hatched a plan, they would break the dikes containing the sea, the Spanish would drown in their camps, and the Rebel Navy would relieve the siege. However, after the first dike was punctured and many of the other dikes inland held, they realized they had a lot more work to do. Over the next few weeks, the winds shifted bringing more sea water and the Rebels broke more dikes until the sea water was touching the city walls. At one point the city walls even eroded and fell down, but by that time the remaining Spanish Army had fled.
