The Spaniards called her the Bugaboo—­a monster to scare children withal.  The patriots christened her the Elephant, the Antwerp Folly, the Lost Penny, with many similar appellations.  A small army might have been maintained for a month, they said, on the money she had cost, or the whole city kept in bread for three months.  At last, late in May, a few days before the battle of the Kowenstyn, she set forth from Antwerp, across the submerged land, upon her expedition to sweep all the Spanish forts out of existence, and to bring the war to its end.  She came to her own end very briefly, for, after drifting helplessly about for an hour, she stuck fast in the sand in the neighbourhood of Ordam, while the crew and soldiers made their escape, and came back to the city to share in the ridicule which, from first to last, had attached itself to the monster-ship.

Two days after the Kowenstyn affair, Alexander sent an expedition under Count Charles Mansfeld to take possession of the great Bugaboo.  The boat, in which were Count Charles, Count Aremberg, his brother de Barbancon, and other noble volunteers, met with an accident:  a keg of gun powder accidentally exploding, blowing Aremberg into the water, whence he escaped unharmed by swimming, and frightfully damaging Mansfeld in the face.  This indirect mischief—­the only injury ever inflicted by the War’s End upon the enemy—­did not prevent the rest of the party in the boats from taking possession of the ship, and bringing her in triumph to the Prince of Parma.  After being thoroughly examined and heartily laughed at by the Spaniards, she was broken up—­her cannon, munitions, and other valuable materials, being taken from her—­and then there was an end of the War’s End.

This useless expenditure-against the judgment and entreaties of many leading personages—­was but a type of the difficulties with which Sainte Aldegonde had been obliged to contend from the first day of the siege to the last.  Every one in the city had felt himself called on to express an opinion as to the proper measures for defence.  Diversity of humours, popular license, anarchy, did not constitute the best government for a city beleagured by Alexander Farnese.  We have seen the deadly injury inflicted upon the cause at the outset by the brutality of the butchers, and the manful struggle which Sainte Aldegonde had maintained against their cupidity and that of their friends.  He had dealt with the thousand difficulties which rose up around him from day to day, but his best intentions were perpetually misconstrued, his most strenuous exertions steadily foiled.  It was a city where there was much love of money, and where commerce—­always timid by nature, particularly when controlled by alien residents—­was often the cause of almost abject cowardice.