the walls, and threw themselves head foremost into the moat.  Many were drowned, and but a very few effected their escape.  Justinus de Nassau. sprang over the parapet, and succeeded in swimming the ditch.  Kleerhagen, driven into the Holy Cross tower, ascended to its .roof, leaped, all accoutred as he was, into the river, and with the assistance of a Scotch soldier, came safe to land.  Ferdinand Truchsess, brother of the ex-elector of Cologne, was killed.  Four or five hundred of the assailants—­nearly all who had entered the city—­were slain, and about fifty of the burghers.

Hohenlo soon came back, with Colonel Ysselstein, and two thousand fresh troops.  But their noses, says a contemporary, grew a hundred feet long with surprise when they saw the gate shut in their faces.  It might have occurred to the Count, when he rushed out of the town for reinforcements, that it would be as well to replace the guard, which—­as he must have seen—­had abandoned their post.

Cursing his folly, he returned, mavellously discomfited, and deservedly censured, to Gertruydenberg.  And thus had a most important enterprise; which had nearly been splendidly successful, ended in disaster and disgrace.  To the recklessness of the general, to the cupidity which he had himself awakened in his followers, was the failure alone to be attributed.  Had he taken possession of the city with a firm grasp at the head of his four thousand men, nothing could have resisted him; Haultepenne, and his insignificant force, would have been dead, or his prisoners; the basis of Parma’s magnificent operations would have been withdrawn; Antwerp would have been saved.

“Infinite gratitude,” wrote Parma to Philip, “should be rendered to the Lord.  Great thanks are also due to Haultepenne.  Had the rebels succeeded in their enterprise against Bolduc, I should have been compelled to abandon the siege of Antwerp.  The town; by its strength and situation, is of infinite importance for the reduction both of that place and of Brussels, and the rebels in possession of Bolduc would have cut off my supplies.”

The Prince recommended Haultepenne most warmly to the King as deserving of a rich “merced.”  The true hero of the day, however—­at least the chief agent in the victory was the poor, crushed, nameless victim who had cut the ropes of the portcullis at the Antwerp gate.

Hohenlo was deeply stung by the disgrace which he had incurred.  For a time he sought oblivion in hard drinking; but—­brave and energetic, though reckless—­he soon became desirous of retrieving his reputation by more successful enterprises.  There was no lack of work, and assuredly his hands were rarely idle.

“Hollach (Hohenlo) is gone from hence on Friday last,” wrote Davison to Walsingham, “he will do what he may to recover his reputation lost in the attempt, of Bois-le-Duc; which, for the grief and trouble he hath conceived thereof, hath for the time greatly altered him.”