He afterwards proceeded, in a rapid and hurried manner, to give his Majesty the outlines of the battle, mentioning, with great encomium, Capizucca and Aquila, Mondragon and Vasto, with many other officers, and recommending them for reward and promotion; praising, in short, heartily and earnestly, all who had contributed to the victory, except himself, to whose personal exertions it was chiefly due.  “As for good odd Mansfeld,” said he, “he bore himself like the man he is, and he deserves that your Majesty should send him a particular mark of your royal approbation, writing to him yourself pleasantly in Spanish, which is that which will be most highly esteemed by him.”  Alexander hinted also that Philip would do well to bestow upon Mansfeld the countship of Biart, as a reward for his long years of faithful service!

This action on the Kowenstyn terminated the effective resistance of Antwerp.  A few days before, the monster-vessel, in the construction of which so much time and money had been consumed, had at last been set afloat.  She had been called the War’s End, and, so far as Antwerp was concerned, the fates that presided over her birth seemed to have been paltering in a double sense when the ominous name was conferred.  She was larger than anything previously known in naval architecture; she had four masts and three helms.  Her bulwarks were ten feet thick; her tops were musket-proof.  She had twenty guns of largest size, besides many other pieces of artillery of lesser calibre, the lower tier of which was almost at the water’s level.  She was to carry one thousand men, and she was so supported on corks and barrels as to be sure to float under any circumstances.  Thus she was a great swimming fortress which could not be sunk, and was impervious to shot.  Unluckily, however, in spite of her four masts and three helms, she would neither sail nor steer, and she proved but a great, unmanageable and very ridiculous tub, fully justifying all the sarcasms that had been launched upon her during the period of her construction, which had been almost as long as the siege itself.

The Spaniards called her the Bugaboo—­a monster to scare children withal.  The patriots christened her the Elephant, the Antwerp Folly, the Lost Penny, with many similar appellations.  A small army might have been maintained for a month, they said, on the money she had cost, or the whole city kept in bread for three months.  At last, late in May, a few days before the battle of the Kowenstyn, she set forth from Antwerp, across the submerged land, upon her expedition to sweep all the Spanish forts out of existence, and to bring the war to its end.  She came to her own end very briefly, for, after drifting helplessly about for an hour, she stuck fast in the sand in the neighbourhood of Ordam, while the crew and soldiers made their escape, and came back to the city to share in the ridicule which, from first to last, had attached itself to the monster-ship.