The Swint, or great sea-channel of Sluys, being now completely in the possession of the stadholder, he deliberately proceeded to lay out his lines, to make his entrenched camp, and to invest his city with the beautiful neatness which ever characterized his sieges.  A groan came from the learned Lipsius, as he looked from the orthodox shades of Louvain upon the progress of the heretic prince.

“Would that I were happier,” he cried, “but things are not going on in Flanders as I could wish.  How easy it would have been to save Sluys, which we are now trying so hard to do, had we turned our attention thither in time!  But now we have permitted the enemy to entrench and fortify himself, and we are the less excusable because we know to our cost how felicitously he fights with the spade, and that he builds works like an ancient Roman . . . . .  Should we lose Sluys, which God forbid, how much strength and encouragement will be acquired by the foe, and by all who secretly or openly favour him!  Our neighbours are all straining their eyes, as from a watch-tower, eager to see the result of all these doings.  But what if they too should begin to move?  Where should we be?  I pray God to have mercy on the Netherlanders, whom He has been so many years chastising with heavy whips.”

It was very true.  The man with the spade had been allowed to work too long at his felicitous vocation.  There had been a successful effort made to introduce reinforcements to the garrison.  Troops, to the number of fifteen hundred, had been added to those already shut up there, but the attempts to send in supplies were not so fortunate.  Maurice had completely invested the town before the end of May, having undisputed possession of the harbour and of all the neighbouring country.  He was himself encamped on the west side of the Swint; Charles van der Noot lying on the south.  The submerged meadows, stretching all around in the vicinity of the haven, he had planted thickly with gunboats.  Scarcely a bird or a fish could go into or out of the place.  Thus the stadholder exhibited to the Spaniards who, fifteen miles off towards the west, had been pounding and burrowing three years long before Ostend without success, what he understood by a siege.

On the 22nd of May a day of solemn prayer and fasting was, by command of Maurice, celebrated throughout the besieging camp.  In order that the day should be strictly kept in penance, mortification, and thanksgiving, it was ordered, on severe penalties, that neither the commissaries nor sutlers should dispense any food whatever, throughout the twenty-four hours.  Thus the commander-in-chief of the republic prepared his troops for the work before them.