Still the bridge was believed to be a mere fable, a chimaera.  Parma, men said, had become a lunatic from pride.  It was as easy to make the Netherlands submit to the yoke of the Inquisition as to put a bridle on the Scheldt.  Its depth; breadth, the ice-floods of a northern winter, the neighbourhood of the Zeeland fleets, the activity of the Antwerp authorities, all were pledges that the attempt would be signally frustrated.

And they should have been pledges—­more than enough.  Unfortunately, however, there was dissension within, and no chieftain in the field, no sage in the council, of sufficient authority to sustain the whole burthen of the war, and to direct all the energies of the commonwealth.  Orange was dead.  His son, one day to become the most illustrious military commander in Europe, was a boy of seventeen, nominally captain-general, but in reality but a youthful apprentice to his art.  Hohenlo was wild, wilful, and obstinate.  Young William Lewis Nassau, already a soldier of marked abilities, was fully occupied in Friesland, where he was stadholder, and where he had quite enough to do in making head against the Spanish governor and general, the veteran Verdugo:  Military operations against Zutphen distracted the attention of the States, which should have been fixed upon Antwerp.

Admiral Treslong, as we have seen, was refractory, the cause of great delinquency on the part of the fleets, and of infinite disaster to the commonwealth.  More than all, the French negotiation was betraying the States into indolence and hesitation; and creating a schism between the leading politicians of the country.  Several thousand French troops, under Monsieur d’Allaynes, were daily expected, but never arrived; and thus, while English and French partisans were plotting and counter-plotting, while a delusive diplomacy was usurping the place of lansquenettes and gun-boats—­the only possible agents at that moment to preserve Antwerp—­the bridge of Parma was slowly advancing.  Before the winter had closed in, the preparatory palisades had been finished.

Between Kalloo and Ordam, upon the opposite side, a sandbar had been discovered in the river’s bed, which diminished the depth of the stream, and rendered the pile-driving comparatively easy.  The breadth of the Scheldt at this passage was twenty-four hundred feet; its depth, sixty feet.  Upon the Flemish side, near Kalloo, a strong fort was erected, called Saint Mary, in honour of the blessed Virgin, to whom the whole siege of Antwerp had been dedicated from the beginning.  On the opposite bank was a similar fort, flamed Philip, for the King.  From each of these two points, thus fortified, a framework of heavy timber, supported upon huge piles, had been carried so far into the stream on either side that the distance between the ends had at last been reduced to thirteen hundred feet.  The breadth of the roadway—­formed of strong sleepers firmly bound together—­was twelve feet, along which block-houses of great thickness were placed to defend the whole against assault.