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.

Could the Kowenstyn be pierced, the water, now divided by that great
bulwark into two vast lakes, would flow together in one continuous sea.
Moreover the Scheldt, it was thought, would, in that case, return to its
own cannel through Brabant, deserting its present bed, and thus leaving
the famous bridge high and dry. A wide sheet of navigable water would
then roll between Antwerp and the Zeeland coasts, and Parma's bridge, the
result of seven months' labour, would become as useless as a child's