And the reflection was most painful to Leicester and to every generous Englishman or Netherlander in the country, that this important city and its heroic defenders might have been preserved, but for want of harmony and want of money.  Twice had the Earl got together a force of four thousand men for the relief of the place, and twice had he been obliged to disband them again for the lack of funds to set them in the field.

He had pawned his plate and other valuables, exhausted his credit, and had nothing for it but to wait for the Queen’s tardy remittances, and to wrangle with the States; for the leaders of that body were unwilling to accord large supplies to a man who had become personally suspected by them, and was the representative of a deeply-suspected government.  Meanwhile, one-third at least of the money which really found its way from time to time out of England, was filched from the “poor starved wretches,” as Leicester called his soldiers, by the dishonesty of Norris, uncle of Sir John and army-treasurer.  This man was growing so rich on his peculations, on his commissions, and on his profits from paying the troops in a depreciated coin, that Leicester declared the whole revenue of his own landed estates in England to be less than that functionary’s annual income.  Thus it was difficult to say whether the “ragged rogues” of Elizabeth or the maimed and neglected soldiers of Philip were in the more pitiable plight.

The only consolation in the recent reduction of Neusz was to be found in the fact that Parma had only gained a position, for the town had ceased to exist; and in the fiction that he had paid for his triumph by the loss of six thousand soldiers, killed and wounded.  In reality not more than five hundred of Farnese’s army lost their lives, and although the town, excepting some churches, had certainly been destroyed; yet the Prince was now master of the Rhine as far as Cologne, and of the Meuse as far as Grave.  The famine which pressed so sorely upon him, might now be relieved, and his military communications with Germany be considered secure.

The conqueror now turned his attention to Rheinberg, twenty-five miles farther down the river.

Sir Philip Sidney had not been well satisfied by the comparative idleness in which, from these various circumstances; he had been compelled to remain.  Early in the spring he had been desirous of making an attack upon Flanders by capturing the town of Steenberg.  The faithful Roger Williams had strongly seconded the proposal.  “We wish to show your Excellency,” said he to Leicester, “that we are not sound asleep.”  The Welshman was not likely to be accused of somnolence, but on this occasion Sidney and himself had been overruled.  At a later moment, and during the siege of Neusz, Sir Philip had the satisfaction of making a successful foray into Flanders.

The expedition had been planned by Prince Maurice of Nassau, and was his. earliest military achievement.  He proposed carrying by surprise, the city of Axel, a well-built, strongly-fortified town on the south-western edge of the great Scheldt estuary, and very important from its position.  Its acquisition would make the hold of the patriots and the English upon Sluys and Ostend more secure, and give them many opportunities of annoying the enemy in Flanders.