approaches with the utmost rapidity.  All difficulties were overcome by the engineering skill of the scientific commander; and finally two tunnels sixty feet deep were driven under the broad dry moat before the town walls.  The English regiments during these operations bore the brunt of the fighting and lost heavily, Colonels Harwood and the Earl of Oxford being killed and Colonel Morgan dangerously wounded.  After exploding a mine, a forlorn hope of fifty English troops rushed out from one of the tunnels and made good their footing upon the ramparts.  Others followed, and the garrison, fearing that further resistance might entail the sacking of the town, surrendered (August 23) with honours of war.

One result of the fall of Maestricht was a renewal on the part of the Archduchess Isabel of negotiations for peace or a long truce.  On the authority of Frederick Henry’s memoirs the terms first offered to him in camp were favourable and might have been accepted.  When, however, the discussion was shifted to the Hague, the attitude of the Belgic representatives had stiffened.  The cause was not far to seek, for on November 6, 1632 the ever-victorious Gustavus Adolphus had fallen in the hour of triumph in the fatal battle of Luetzen.  The death of the Swedish hero was a great blow to the Protestant cause and gave fresh heart to the despondent Catholic alliance.  The negotiations dragged however their slow length along, the chief point of controversy being the old dispute about freedom to trade in the Indies.  On this point agreement was impossible.  Spain would yield nothing of her pretensions; and the Hollanders would hear of no concessions that threatened the prosperity of the East and West India Companies in which so many merchants and investors were deeply interested.  Any admission of a Spanish monopoly or right of exclusion would have spelt ruin to thousands.  The diplomatic discussions, however, went on for many months in a desultory and somewhat futile manner; and meanwhile though hostilities did not actually cease, the campaign of 1633 was conducted in a half-hearted fashion.  The death of Isabel on November 29, 1633, shattered finally any hopes that the peace party in the Provinces (for there was a strong peace party) might have had of arriving at any satisfactory agreement.  By the decease of the arch-duchess, who had been a wise and beneficent ruler and had commanded the respect and regard not only of her own subjects but of many northerners also, the Belgic provinces reverted to the crown of Spain and passed under the direct rule of Philip IV.  The Cardinal Infante Ferdinand, fresh from his crushing victory over the Swedes at Noerdlingen, came as governor to Brussels in 1634, at the head of considerable Spanish forces, and an active renewal of the war in 1635 was clearly imminent.