Unfortunately for the fame of Pompey, one of his many wheels was crushed on the first attempt to drag the chariot to the scene of anticipated triumph, the whole structure remained embedded in the sand, very much askew; nor did all the mules and horses that could be harnessed to it ever succeed in removing it an inch out of a position, which was anything but triumphant.

It seemed probable enough therefore that, so far as depended on the operations from the eastern side, the siege of Ostend, which had now lasted two years and three months, might be protracted for two years and three months longer.  Indeed, Spinola at once perceived that if the archduke was ever to be put in possession of the place for which he had professed himself ready to wait eighteen years, it would be well to leave Bucquoy and Targone to build dykes and chariots and bury them on the east at their leisure, while more energy was brought to bear upon the line of fortifications of the west than had hitherto been employed.  There had been shooting enough, bloodshed enough, suffering enough, but it was amazing to see the slight progress made.  The occupation of what were called the external Squares has been described.  This constituted the whole result of the twenty-seven months’ work.

The town itself—­the small and very insignificant kernel which lay enclosed in such a complicated series of wrappings and layers of defences—­seemed as far off as if it were suspended in the sky.  The old haven or canal, no longer navigable for ships, still served as an admirable moat which the assailants had not yet succeeded in laying entirely dry.  It protected the counterscarp, and was itself protected by an exterior aeries of works, while behind the counterscarp was still another ditch, not so broad nor deep as the canal, but a formidable obstacle even after the counterscarp should be gained.  There were nearly fifty forts and redoubts in these lines, of sufficient importance to have names which in those days became household words, not only in the Netherlands, but in Europe; the siege of Ostend being the one military event of Christendom, so long as it lasted.  These names are of course as much forgotten now as those of the bastions before Nineveh.  A very few of them will suffice to indicate the general aspect of the operations.  On the extreme southwest of Ostend had been in peaceful times a polder—­ the general term to designate a pasture out of which the sea-water had been pumped—­and the forts in that quarter were accordingly called by that name, as Polder Half-moon, Polder Ravelin, or great and little Polder Bulwark, as the case might be.  Farther on towards the west, the north-west, and the north, and therefore towards the beach, were the West Ravelin, West Bulwark, Moses’s Table, the Porcupine, the Hell’s Mouth, the old church, and last and most important of all, the Sand Hill.  The last-named work was protected by the Porcupine and Hell’s Mouth, was the key to the whole series of fortifications, and was connected by a curtain with the old church, which was in the heart of the old town.