redevil skippers ready to
bring cargoes. Fleets of fly-boats, convoyed by armed vessels, were
perpetually running the gauntlet. Sharp actions on shore between the
forts of the patriots and those of Parma, which were all intermingled
promiscuously along the banks, and amphibious and most bloody encounters
on ship-board, dyke, and in the stream itself, between the wild
Zeelanders and the fierce pikemen of Italy and Spain, were of repeated
occurrence. Many a lagging craft fell into the enemy's hands, when, as a
matter of course, the men, women, and children, on board, were horribly
mutilated by the Spaniards, and were then sent drifting in their boat
with the tide--their arms, legs, and ears lopped off up to the city, in
order that--the dangerous nature of this provision-trade might be fully
illustrated.

Yet that traffic still went on. It would have continued until Antwerp had
been victualled for more than a year, had not the city authorities, in
the plentitude of their wisdom, thought proper to issue orders for its
regulation. On the 25th October (1584) a census was taken, when the
number of persons inside the walls was found to be ninety thousand. For
this population it was estimated that 300,000 veertell, or about 900,000
bushels of corn, would be required annually. The grain was coming in very
fast, notwithstanding the perilous nature of the trade; for wheat could
be bought in Holland for fifty florins the last, or about fifteen pence
sterling the bushel, while it was worth five or six florins the veertel,
or about four shillings the bushel, in Antwerp.

The magistrates now committed a folly more stupendous than it seemed
possible for human creatures, under such circumstances, to compass. They
established a maximum upon corn. The skippers who had run their cargoes
through the gauntlet, all the way from Flushing to Antwerp, found on
their arrival, that, instead of being rewarded, according to the natural
laws of demand and supply, they were required to exchange their wheat,
rye, butter, and beef, against the exact sum which the Board of Schepens
thought proper to consider a reasonable remuneration. Moreover, in order
to prevent the accumulation of provisions in private magazines, it was
enacted, that all consumers of grain should be compelled to make their
purchases directly from the ships. These two measures were almost as
fatal as the preservation of the Blaw-garen Dyke, in the interest of the
butchers. Winter and f