and Friesland, because, in that case, the Hollanders, seeing the enemy so near their own borders, would be obliged to withdraw their assistance from Antwerp.  ’Tis pity to see how few Spaniards your Majesty has left, and how diminished is our army.  Now, also, is the time to expect sickness, and this affair of Antwerp is obviously stretching out into large proportions.  Unless soon reinforced, we must inevitably go to destruction.  I implore your Majesty to ponder the matter well, and not to defer the remedy.”

His Majesty was sure to ponder the matter well, if that had been all.  Philip was good at pondering; but it was equally certain that the remedy would be deferred.  Meantime Alexander and his starving but heroic little army were left to fight their battles as they could.

His complaints were incessant, most reasonable, but unavailing.  With all the forces he could muster, by withdrawing from the neighbourhood of Ghent, Brussels, Vilvoorde, and from all the garrisons, every man that could be spared, he had not strength enough to guard his own posts.  To attempt to win back the important forts recently captured by the rebels on the Doel, was quite out of the question.  The pictures he painted of his army were indeed most dismal.

The Spaniards were so reduced by sickness that it was pitiful to see them.  The Italians were not in much better condition, nor the Germans.  “As for the Walloons,” said he, “they are deserting, as they always do.  In truth, one of my principal dangers is that the French civil wars are now tempting my soldiers across the frontier; the country there is so much richer, and offers so much more for the plundering.”

During the few weeks which immediately followed them famous descent of the ‘Hope’ and the ‘Fortune,’ there had accordingly been made a variety of less elaborate, but apparently mischievous, efforts against the bridge.  On the whole, however, the object was rather to deceive and amuse the royalists, by keeping their attention fixed in that quarter, while a great attack was, in reality, preparing against the Kowenstyn.  That strong barrier, as repeatedly stated, was even a more formidable obstacle than the bridge to the communication between the beleagured city and their allies upon the outside.  Its capture and demolition, even at this late period, would open the navigation to all the fleets of Zeeland.

In the undertaking of the 5th of April all had been accomplished that human ingenuity could devise; yet the triumph had been snatched away even at the very moment when it was complete.  A determined and vigorous effort was soon to be made upon the Kowenstyn, in the very face of Parma; for it now seemed obvious that the true crisis was to come upon that fatal dyke.  The great bulwark was three miles long.  It reached from Stabroek in Brabant, near which village Mansfeld’s troops were encamped, across the inundated country, up to the line of the Scheldt.  Thence, along the river-dyke, and across the bridge to Kalloo and Beveren, where Parma’s forces lay, was a continuous fortified road some three leagues in length; so that the two divisions of the besieging army, lying four leagues apart, were all connected by this important line.