On board the Black Galley Captain Michelznon, eleven of his officers, and fifteen of his men were killed; Admiral de Moor was slightly wounded, and had five of his men killed and twenty wounded; Captain Logier was wounded in the foot, and lost fifteen killed and twelve wounded.

The number of those killed in Spinola’s fleet has been placed as high as fourteen hundred, including two hundred officers and gentlemen of quality, besides the crowds of galley-slaves thrown overboard.  This was perhaps an exaggeration.  The losses were, however, sufficient to put a complete atop to the enterprise out of which the unfortunate Spinola had conceived such extravagant hopes of fame and fortune.

The herring-smacks and other coasters, besides the transports passing to and from Ostend, sailed thenceforth unmolested by any galleys from Sluys.  One unfortunate sloop, however, in moving out from the beleaguered city, ran upon some shoals before getting out of the Gullet and thus fell a prize to the besiegers.  She was laden with nothing more precious than twelve wounded soldiers on their way to the hospitals at Flushing.  These prisoners were immediately hanged, at the express command of the archduke, because they had been taken on the sea where, according to his highness, there were no laws of war.

The stadholder, against his will—­for Maurice was never cruel—­felt himself obliged to teach the cardinal better jurisprudence and better humanity for the future.  In order to show him that there was but one belligerent law on sea and on land, he ordered two hundred Spanish prisoners within his lines to draw lots from an urn in which twelve of the tickets were inscribed with the fatal word gibbet.  Eleven of the twelve thus marked by ill luck were at once executed.  The twelfth, a comely youth, was pardoned at the intercession of a young girl.  It is not stated whether or not she became his wife.  It is also a fact worth mentioning, as illustrating the recklessness engendered by a soldier’s life, that the man who drew the first blank sold it to one of his comrades and plunged his hand again into the fatal urn.  Whether he succeeded in drawing the gibbet at his second trial has not been recorded.  When these executions had taken place in full view of the enemy’s camp, Maurice formally announced that for every prisoner thenceforth put to death by the archduke two captives from his own army should be hanged.  These stern reprisals, as usual, put an end to the foul system of martial murder.

Throughout the year the war continued to be exclusively the siege of Ostend.  Yet the fierce operations, recently recorded, having been succeeded by a period of comparative languor, Governor Dorp at last obtained permission to depart to repair his broken health.  He was succeeded in command of the forces within the town by Charles Van der Noot, colonel of the Zeeland regiment which had suffered so much in the first act of the battle of Nieuport.  Previously to this exchange, however, a day of solemn thanksgiving and prayer was set apart on the anniversary of the beginning of the siege.  Since the 5th of July, 1601, two years had been spent by the whole power of the enemy in the attempt to reduce this miserable village, and the whole result thus far had been the capture of three little external forts.  There seemed cause for thanksgiving.