The treachery was so manifest, that Oberstein felt all self-reproach for his own breach of faith to be superfluous.  It was however evident that the attack was to be immediately expected.  What was to be done?  All the officers counselled the immediate erection of a bulwark on the side of the city exposed to the castle, but there were no miners nor engineers.  Champagny, however, recommended a skilful and experienced engineer to superintend; the work in the city; and pledged himself that burghers enough would volunteer as miners.  In less than an hour, ten or twelve thousand persons, including multitudes of women of all ranks, were at work upon the lines marked out by the engineer.  A ditch and breast-work extending from the gate of the Beguins to the street of the Abbey Saint Michael, were soon in rapid progress.  Meantime, the newly arrived troops, with military insolence, claimed the privilege of quartering themselves in the best houses which they could find.  They already began to, insult and annoy the citizens whom they had been sent to defend; nor were they destined to atone, by their subsequent conduct in the face of the enemy, for the brutality with which they treated their friends.  Champagny, however; was ill-disposed to brook their licentiousness.  They had been sent to protect the city and the homes of Antwerp from invasion.  They were not to establish themselves, at every fireside on their first arrival.  There was work enough for them out of doors, and they were to do that work at once.  He ordered them to prepare for a bivouac in, the streets, and flew from house to house, sword in hand; driving forth the intruders at imminent peril of his life.  Meantime, a number of Italian and Spanish merchants fled from the city, and took refuge in the castle.  The Walloon soldiers were for immediately plundering their houses, as if plunder had been the object for which they had been sent to Antwerp.  It was several hours before Champagny, with all his energy, was able to quell these disturbances.

In the course of the day, Oberstein received a letter from Don Sandra d’Avila, calling solemnly upon him to fulfil his treaty of the 29th of October.  The German colonels from the citadel had, on the previous afternoon, held a personal interview with Oberstein beneath the walls, which had nearly ended in blows, and they had been obliged to save themselves by flight from the anger of the Count’s soldiers, enraged at the deceit by which their leader had been so nearly entrapped.  This summons of ridiculous solemnity to keep a treaty which had already been torn to shreds by both parties, Oberstein answered with defiance and contempt.  The reply was an immediate cannonade from the batteries of the citadel; which made the position of those erecting the ramparts excessively dangerous.  The wall was strengthened with bales of merchandise, casks of earth, upturned wagons, and similar bulky objects, hastily piled together.  In, some places it was sixteen feet high; in others