himself of cuirass and helmet, recommended himself to the Blessed Virgin, and swam safely ashore.  Another young officer of Parma’s body-guard, Francois de Liege by name, standing on the Kalloo end of the bridge, rose like a feather into the clouds, and, flying quite across the river, alighted on the opposite bank with no further harm than a contused shoulder.  He imagined himself (he said afterwards) to have been changed into a cannon-ball, as he rushed through the pitchy atmosphere, propelled by a blast of irresistible fury.

[The chief authorities used in the foregoing account of this famous enterprise are those already cited on a previous page, viz.:  the Ms. Letters of the Prince of Parma in the Archives of Simancas; Bor, ii. 596, 597; Strada, H. 334 seq.; Meteren, xii. 223; Hoofd Vervolgh, 91; Baudartii Polemographia, ii. 24-27; Bentivoglio, etc., I have not thought it necessary to cite them step by step; for all the accounts, with some inevitable and unimportant discrepancies, agree with each other.  The most copious details are to be found in Strada and in Bor.]

It had been agreed that Admiral Jacobzoon should, immediately after the explosion of the fire-ships, send an eight-oared barge to ascertain the amount of damage.  If a breach had been effected, and a passage up to the city opened, he was to fire a rocket.  At this signal, the fleet stationed at Lillo, carrying a heavy armament, laden with provisions enough to relieve Antwerp from all anxiety, and ready to sail on the instant, was at once to force its way up the river.

The deed was done.  A breach, two hundred feet in width was made.  Had the most skilful pilot in Zeeland held the helm of the ‘Hope,’ with a choice crew obedient to his orders, he could not have guided her more carefully than she had been directed by wind and tide.  Avoiding the raft which lay in her way, she had, as it were, with the intelligence of a living creature, fulfilled the wishes of the daring genius that had created her; and laid herself alongside the bridge, exactly at the most telling point.  She had then destroyed herself, precisely at the right moment.  All the effects, and more than all, that had been predicted by the Mantuan wizard had come to pass.  The famous bridge was cleft through and through, and a thousand picked men—­Parma’s very “daintiest”—­were blown out of existence.  The Governor-General himself was lying stark and stiff upon the bridge which he said should be his triumphal monument or his tomb.  His most distinguished officers were dead, and all the survivors were dumb and blind with astonishment at the unheard of, convulsion.  The passage was open for the fleet, and the fleet, lay below with sails spread, and oars in the rowlocks, only waiting for the signal to bear up at once to the scene of action, to smite out of existence all that remained of the splendid structure, and to carry relief and triumph into Antwerp.