The Spaniards were so reduced by sickness that it was pitiful to see them.  The Italians were not in much better condition, nor the Germans.  “As for the Walloons,” said he, “they are deserting, as they always do.  In truth, one of my principal dangers is that the French civil wars are now tempting my soldiers across the frontier; the country there is so much richer, and offers so much more for the plundering.”

During the few weeks which immediately followed them famous descent of the ‘Hope’ and the ‘Fortune,’ there had accordingly been made a variety of less elaborate, but apparently mischievous, efforts against the bridge.  On the whole, however, the object was rather to deceive and amuse the royalists, by keeping their attention fixed in that quarter, while a great attack was, in reality, preparing against the Kowenstyn.  That strong barrier, as repeatedly stated, was even a more formidable obstacle than the bridge to the communication between the beleagured city and their allies upon the outside.  Its capture and demolition, even at this late period, would open the navigation to all the fleets of Zeeland.

In the undertaking of the 5th of April all had been accomplished that human ingenuity could devise; yet the triumph had been snatched away even at the very moment when it was complete.  A determined and vigorous effort was soon to be made upon the Kowenstyn, in the very face of Parma; for it now seemed obvious that the true crisis was to come upon that fatal dyke.  The great bulwark was three miles long.  It reached from Stabroek in Brabant, near which village Mansfeld’s troops were encamped, across the inundated country, up to the line of the Scheldt.  Thence, along the river-dyke, and across the bridge to Kalloo and Beveren, where Parma’s forces lay, was a continuous fortified road some three leagues in length; so that the two divisions of the besieging army, lying four leagues apart, were all connected by this important line.

Could the Kowenstyn be pierced, the water, now divided by that great bulwark into two vast lakes, would flow together in one continuous sea.  Moreover the Scheldt, it was thought, would, in that case, return to its own cannel through Brabant, deserting its present bed, and thus leaving the famous bridge high and dry.  A wide sheet of navigable water would then roll between Antwerp and the Zeeland coasts, and Parma’s bridge, the result of seven months’ labour, would become as useless as a child’s broken toy.

Alexander had thoroughly comprehended the necessity of maintaining the Kowenstyn.  All that it was possible to do with the meagre forces at his disposal, he had done.  He had fringed both its margins, along its whole length, with a breastwork of closely-driven stakes.  He had strengthened the whole body of the dyke with timber-work and piles.  Upon its river-end, just at the junction with the great Scheldt dyke, a strong fortress, called the Holy Cross, had been constructed, which was under the special command