It was certainly an advantage, as hostilities were necessarily to have continued somewhere during all that period, that all the bloodshed and desolation had been concentrated upon one insignificant locality, and one more contiguous to the enemy’s possessions than to those of the united States.  It was very doubtful, however, whether all that money and blood might not have been expended in some other manner more beneficial to the cause of the archdukes.  At least it could hardly be maintained that they took anything by the capitulation of Ostend but the most barren and worthless of trophies.  Eleven old guns, partly broken, and a small quantity of ammunition, were all the spoils of war found in the city after its surrender.

The Marquis Spinola went to Spain.  On passing through Paris he was received with immense enthusiasm by Henry iv., whose friendship for the States, and whose desperate designs against the house of Austria, did not prevent him from warmly congratulating the great Spanish general on his victory.  It was a victory, said Henry, which he could himself have never achieved, and, in recognition of so great a triumph, he presented Spinola with a beautiful Thracian horse, valued at twelve hundred ducats.  Arriving in Spain, the conqueror found himself at once the object of the open applause and the scarcely concealed hatred of the courtiers and politicians.  He ardently desired to receive as his guerdon the rank of grandee of Spain.  He met with a refusal.  To keep his hat on his head in presence of the sovereign was the highest possible reward.  Should that be bestowed upon him now, urged Lerma, what possible recompense could be imagined for the great services which all felt confident that he was about to render in the future?  He must continue to remove his hat in the monarch’s company.  Meantime, if he wished the title of prince, with considerable revenues attached to his principality, this was at his disposal.  It must be confessed that in a monarchy where the sentiment of honour was supposed to be the foundation of the whole structure there is something chivalrous and stimulating to the imagination in this preference by the great general of a shadowy but rare distinction to more substantial acquisitions.  Nevertheless, as the grandeeship was refused, it is not recorded that he was displeased with the principality.  Meantime there was a very busy intrigue to deprive him of the command-in-chief of the Catholic forces in Flanders, and one so nearly successful that Mexia, governor of Antwerp citadel, was actually appointed in Spinola’s stead.  It was only after long and anxious conferences at Valladolid with the king and the Duke of Lerma, and after repeated statements in letters from the archdukes that all their hopes of victory depended on retaining the Genoese commander-in-chief, that the matter was finally arranged.  Mexia received an annual pension of eight thousand ducats, and to Spinola was assigned five hundred ducats monthly, as commander-in-chief under the archduke, with an equal salary as agent for the king’s affairs in Flanders.