Meantime the uneasiness and the watchfulness in the biesieging army were very exhausting.  “They are never idle in the city,” wrote Parma.  “They are perpetually proving their obstinacy and pertinacity by their industrious genius and the machines which they devise.  Every day we are expecting some new invention.  On our side we endeavour to counteract their efforts by every human means in our power.  Nevertheless, I confess that our merely human intellect is not competent to penetrate the designs of their diabolical genius.  Certainly, most wonderful and extraordinary things have been exhibited, such as the oldest soldiers here have never before witnessed.”

Moreover, Alexander saw himself growing weaker and weaker.  His force had dwindled to a mere phantom of an army.  His soldiers, ill-fed, half-clothed, unpaid, were fearfully overworked.  He was obliged to concentrate all the troops at his disposal around Antwerp.  Diversions against Ostend, operations in Friesland and Gelderland, although most desirable, had thus been rendered quite impossible.

“I have recalled my cavalry and infantry from Ostend,” he wrote, “and Don Juan de Manrique has fortunately arrived in Stabroek with a thousand good German folk.  The commissary-general of the cavalry has come in, too, with a good lot of the troops that had been encamped in the open country.  Nevertheless, we remain wretchedly weak—­quite insufficient to attempt what ought to be done.  If the enemy were more in force, or if the French wished to make trouble, your Majesty would see how important it had been to provide in time against such contingencies.  And although our neighbours, crestfallen, and rushing upon their own destruction, leave us in quiet, we are not without plenty of work.  It would be of inestimable advantage to make diversions in Gelderland and Friesland, because, in that case, the Hollanders, seeing the enemy so near their own borders, would be obliged to withdraw their assistance from Antwerp.  ’Tis pity to see how few Spaniards your Majesty has left, and how diminished is our army.  Now, also, is the time to expect sickness, and this affair of Antwerp is obviously stretching out into large proportions.  Unless soon reinforced, we must inevitably go to destruction.  I implore your Majesty to ponder the matter well, and not to defer the remedy.”

His Majesty was sure to ponder the matter well, if that had been all.  Philip was good at pondering; but it was equally certain that the remedy would be deferred.  Meantime Alexander and his starving but heroic little army were left to fight their battles as they could.

His complaints were incessant, most reasonable, but unavailing.  With all the forces he could muster, by withdrawing from the neighbourhood of Ghent, Brussels, Vilvoorde, and from all the garrisons, every man that could be spared, he had not strength enough to guard his own posts.  To attempt to win back the important forts recently captured by the rebels on the Doel, was quite out of the question.  The pictures he painted of his army were indeed most dismal.