And now the aspect of the scene was indeed portentous.  The chimera had become a very visible bristling reality.  There stood the bridge which the citizens had ridiculed while it was growing before their faces.  There scowled the Kowenstyn—­black with cannon, covered all over with fortresses which the butchers had so sedulously preserved.  From Parma’s camp at Beveren and Kalloo a great fortified road led across the river and along the fatal dyke all the way to the entrenchments at Stabroek, where Mansfeld’s army lay.  Grim Mondragon held the “holy cross” and the whole Kowenstyn in his own iron grasp.  A chain of forts, built and occupied by the contending hosts of the patriots and the Spaniards, were closely packed together along both banks of the Scheldt, nine miles long from Antwerp to Lillo, and interchanged perpetual cannonades.  The country all around, once fertile as a garden, had been changed into a wild and wintry sea where swarms of gun-boats and other armed vessels manoeuvred and contended with each other over submerged villages and orchards, and among half-drowned turrets and steeples.  Yet there rose the great bulwark—­whose early destruction would have made all this desolation a blessing—­unbroken and obstinate; a perpetual obstacle to communication between Antwerp and Zeeland.  The very spirit of the murdered Prince of Orange seemed to rise sadly and reproachfully out of the waste of waters, as if to rebuke the men who had been so deaf to his solemn warnings.

Brussels, too, wearied and worn, its heart sick with hope deferred, now fell into despair as the futile result of the French negotiation became apparent.  The stately and opulent city had long been in a most abject condition.  Many of its inhabitants attempted to escape from the horrors of starving by flying from its walls.  Of the fugitives, the men were either scourged back by the Spaniards into the city, or hanged up along the road-side.  The women were treated, leniently, even playfully, for it was thought an excellent jest to cut off the petticoats of the unfortunate starving creatures up to their knees, and then command them to go back and starve at home with their friends and fellow-citizens.  A great many persons literally died of hunger.  Matrons with large families poisoned their children and themselves to avoid the more terrible death by starving.  At last, when Vilvoorde was taken, when the baseness of the French King was thoroughly understood, when Parma’s bridge was completed and the Scheldt bridled, Brussels capitulated on as favourable terms as could well have been expected.

     Etext editor’s bookmarks: 

     College of “peace-makers,” who wrangled more than all
     Military virtue in the support of an infamous cause
     Not distinguished for their docility
     Repentance, as usual, had come many hours too late

HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS