Why Leiden Still Stops for 3 October

Every 3 October, Leiden stops. Not for a battle won — for a meal. Herring and white bread, handed out at dawn at the old weigh house, and hutspot on the table at home. The city has been eating the same celebration for four and a half centuries.

The record first. In 1573 and 1574 a Spanish army under Francisco de Valdez had Leiden ringed. By the summer of 1574 the city was starving. Thousands died of hunger; thousands more of the plague that walked in behind it. The mayor, Pieter van der Werff, faced the crowd that wanted to surrender and told them they would have to kill him first — and, the account goes, they could eat his arm if it truly came to that. They held.

The rescue was not an army. It was water. William of Orange ordered the dikes cut, and the sea crawled across the meadows until a fleet could float over farmland. Admiral Louis de Boisot brought more than two hundred flat-bottomed boats, crewed by hardened sailors and loaded with food. Messages travelled in and out by carrier pigeon. Hold out three months, said the pigeon. They held two with food, and one without.

On the night of 2 October 1574, Valdez’s army slipped away. A section of the city wall collapsed at roughly the same moment — the Spanish heard the crash, assumed a trap, and hurried. By the morning of 3 October the flat-bottomed fleet was at the walls, handing herring and white bread to a city that could hardly stand. That evening, Leiden ate hutspot.

Legend? Partly. The bread and the herring are the record — the city still gives both away every 3 October, at the Waag, the old weigh house, to Leiden residents. The hutspot feast is the record too. What is legend is the boy: Cornelis Joppenszoon, a small orphan who supposedly wandered into the abandoned Spanish camp at the Lammenschans and found the cooking pot the fleeing soldiers had left behind. There is a bronze statue of him with his pot by the Lammenschans station. The city has voted with bronze. The hunger was real.

The festival runs on rails. The kermis takes the squares from 1 or 2 October. The taptoe — a parade of the city’s societies — opens the night of 2 October. At dawn on the 3rd, reveille, then the herring and white bread at the Waag, then a communal song in the Van der Werfpark, then the thanksgiving service in the Pieterskerk, a tradition dating to 1574 itself. Afternoon: a big parade with a yearly theme. Evening: fireworks, when the wind permits. Hutspot — a mash of carrot, onion and potato, with klapstuk (beef brisket) or rookworst (smoked sausage) — on every stove. And if 3 October falls on a Sunday, the entire city moves the party one day later. Even the calendar negotiates.

Then the aftermath, which is the part the walk walks through. The next year, 1575, the city got its university — the story goes that William of Orange offered Leiden a choice between tax relief and a university, and the city chose the school. Polished legend; the book says so and labels it. The result is real either way: the oldest university in the Netherlands, founded as a thank-you for the siege. A garden behind it started the Dutch tulip trade a generation later — that story is here: where the Netherlands’ tulip story begins.

Practical advice, both directions. If you want Leiden at its loudest and proudest, come for 3 October and book everything early; the whole city is a festival ground and the streets run on herring and pride. If you want the quiet version, avoid the date — and every other day of the year, the walk is yours: the self-guided walking tour.