A Dutch skipper from Leur

Etten-Leur

Etten-Leur is a municipality in the southern Netherlands. Its name is a combination of the two towns from which the municipality originally arose: Etten and Leur...

, Adriaen van Bergen devised the plot to recapture the city of Breda

Breda

Breda is a municipality and a city in the southern part of the Netherlands. The name Breda derived from brede Aa and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. As a fortified city, the city was of strategic military and political significance...

 from the Spanish during the Eighty Years' War. In February of 1590, he approached Prince Maurice

Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange

Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange was sovereign Prince of Orange from 1618, on the death of his eldest half brother, Philip William, Prince of Orange,...

 with a Trojan horse

Trojan Horse

The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the stratagem that allowed the Greeks finally to enter the city of Troy and end the conflict. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside...

 type plan.

He often took his boat into Breda Castle, where Spanish troops were stationed, and so it was not inspected. On February 25, 70 men were secreted within the peat-filled boat, remembered by the Dutch as the Turfschip van Breda. Adriaen van Bergen however overslept, so the plan had to be delayed. The next day, Adriaen van Bergen suddenly withdrew from the operation. He had to be replaced by two nephews. With this new crew, the attack was successful and the essential fortress of Breda fell to Maurice.

Adriaen van Bergen's grandson Adriaen van der Donck

Adriaen van der Donck

Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck was a lawyer and landowner in New Netherland after whose honorific Jonkheer the city of Yonkers, New York is named...

 played an important role at the colonization of New Netherland

New Netherland

New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...

.