A Dutch skipper from Leur, Adriaen van Bergen devised the plot to recapture the city of

Breda Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...

from the Spanish during the

Eighty Years' War The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt ( nl, Nederlandse Opstand) ( c.1566/1568–1648) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Refo ...

. In February 1590, he approached

Prince Maurice Maurice, Prince Palatine of the Rhine KG (16 January 1621, in Küstrin Castle, Brandenburg – September 1652, near the Virgin Islands), was the fourth son of Frederick V, Elector Palatine and Princess Elizabeth, only daughter of King James VI ...

with a

Trojan horse The Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer's ''Iliad'', with the poem ending before the war is concluded, ...

type plan. In February 1590, during the

Capture of Breda (1590) The capture of Breda was a short battle during the Eighty Years' War and Anglo–Spanish War during which a Dutch and English army led by Maurice of Nassau captured the heavily protected city of Breda. Using a clever tactic reminiscent of the ...

a nobleman from Cambrai, Charles de Heraugiere, under orders from Maurice of Nassau, was to make a covert reconnoiter of Breda. Disguised as a fisherman he was hoping to enter Breda and to study its weaknesses, garrison strength, and general conditions. Heraugiere contacted Adriaen van Bergen, loyal to the Dutch by trade who was used to entering and leaving Breda with a barge loaded of winter fuel, in this case peat. Heraugiere went into the city, hidden between the peat of the barge along with a small group of soldiers, but they discovered how incredibly easy it was as none of the garrison checked the barge. When they were in the heart of Breda they made a hasty exit with enough peat to keep them covered. Heraugiere soon realized a Trojan Horse style attack was too good an opportunity to miss and thus reported it to Maurice as soon as they returned. Adriaen van Bergen's grandson

Adriaen van der Donck Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck (16181655) was a lawyer and landowner in New Netherland after whose honorific ''Jonkheer'' the city of Yonkers, New York, is named. Although he was not, as sometimes claimed, the first lawyer in the Dutch colo ...

played an important role at the colonization of

New Netherland New Netherland ( nl, Nieuw Nederland; la, Novum Belgium or ) was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic that was located on the East Coast of the United States, east coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territor ...

See also