in perfectly good condition.  It was situate in a watery labyrinth, many slender streams from the interior and several saltwater creeks being complicated around it, and then flowing leisurely, in one deep sluggish channel, to the sea.  The wrath of Leicester, when all his efforts to relieve the place had been baffled by the superior skill of Alexander Farnese, has been depicted, and during the seventeen years which had elapsed since its capture, the republic had not ceased to deplore that disaster.  Obviously if the present expedition could end in the restoration of Sluy’s to its rightful owners, it would be a remarkable success, even if Ostend should fall.  Sluy’s and its adjacent domains formed a natural portion of the Zeeland archipelago, the geographical counterpart of Flushing.  With both branches of the stately Scheld in its control, the republic would command the coast, and might even dispense with Ostend, which, in the judgment of Maurice, was an isolated and therefore not a desirable military possession.  The States-General were of a different opinion.  They much desired to obtain Sluy’s, but they would not listen to the abandonment of Ostend.  It was expected of the stadholder, therefore, that he should seize the one and protect the other.  The task was a difficult one.  A less mathematical brain than that of Maurice of Nassau would have reeled at the problem to be solved.  To master such a plexus of canals, estuaries, and dykes, of passages through swamps, of fords at low water which were obliterated by flood-tide; to take possession of a series of redoubts built on the only firm points of land, with nothing but quaking morass over which to manoeuvre troops or plant batteries against them, would be a difficult study, even upon paper.  To accomplish it in the presence of a vigilant and anxious foe seemed bewildering enough.

At first it was the intention of the stadholder, disappointed at learning the occupation of the Swint, to content himself with fortifying Cadzand, in view of future operations at some more favourable moment?  So meagre a result would certainly not have given great satisfaction to the States, nor added much to the military reputation of Maurice.  While he hesitated between plunging without a clue into the watery maze around him, and returning discomfited from the expedition on which such high hopes had been built, a Flemish boor presented himself.  He offered to guide the army around the east and south of Sluy’s, and to point out passages where it would be possible to cross the waters, which, through the care of Spinola, now seemed to forbid access to the place.  Maurice lingered no longer.  On the 28th April, led by the friendly boor, he advanced towards Oostburg.  Next morning a small force of the enemy’s infantry and cavalry was seen, showing that there must be foothold in that direction.  He sent out a few companies to skirmish with those troops, who fled after a very brief action, and, in flying, showed their pursuers