with a brilliant result.

As, however, time was required to accomplish a plan of this magnitude,
the Prince of Parma was content, for the present, with the erection of
numerous forts on the canals and rivers which connected Antwerp with
Dendermonde, Ghent, Malines, Brussels, and other places. Spanish
garrisons were quartered in the vicinity, and almost at the very gates
of those towns, which laid waste the open country, and by their
incursions kept the surrounding territory in alarm. Thus, round Ghent
alone were encamped about three thousand men, and proportionate numbers
round the other towns. In this way, and by means of the secret
understanding which he maintained with the Roman Catholic inhabitants of
those towns, the duke hoped, without weakening his own forces, gradually
to exhaust their strength, and by the harassing operations of a petty
but incessant warfare, even without any formal siege, to reduce them at
last to capitulate.

In the meantime the main force was directed against Antwerp, which he
now closely invested. He fixed his headquarters at Bevern in Flanders,
a few miles from Antwerp, where he found a fortified camp. The
protection of the Flemish bank of the Scheldt was entrusted to the
Margrave of Rysburg, general of cavalry; the Brabant bank to the Count
Peter Ernest Von Mansfeld, who was joined by another Spanish leader,
Mondragone. Both the latter succeeded in crossing the Scheldt upon
pontoons, notwithstanding the Flemish admiral's ship was sent to oppose
them, and, passing Antwerp, took up their position at Stabroek in
Bergen. Detached corps dispersed themselves along the whole Brabant
side, partly to secure the dykes and the roads.

Some miles below Antwerp the Scheldt was guarded by two strong forts, of
which one was situated at Liefkenshoek on the island Doel, in Flanders,
the other at Lillo, exactly opposite the coast of Brabant. The last had
been erected by Mondragone himself, by order of the Duke of Alvaa, when
the latter was still master of Antwerp, and for this very reason the
Duke of Parma now entrusted to him the attack upon it. On the
possession of these two forts the success of the siege seemed wholly to
depend, since all the vessels sailing from Zealand to Antwerp must pass
under their guns. Both forts had a short time before been strengthened
by the besieged, and the former was scarcely finished when the Margrave
of Rysburg attacked it. The celerity with which he went to work
surpr