sixty days' siege, upon the terms usually
granted by the stadholder. The garrison was to go out with the honours of
war. Those of the inhabitants who wished to leave were to leave; those
who preferred staying were to stay; rendering due allegiance to the
republic, and abstaining in public from the rites of the Roman Church,
without being exposed, however, to any inquiries as to their religious
opinions, or any interference within their households.

The work went slowly on before Ostend. Much effect had been produced,
however, by the operations of the archduke's little naval force. The
galley of that day, although a child's toy as compared with the wonders
of naval architecture of our own time, was an effective machine enough to
harass fishing and coasting vessels in creeks and estuaries, and along
the shores of Holland and Zeeland during tranquil weather.

The locomotive force of these vessels consisted of galley-slaves, in
which respect the Spaniards had an advantage over other nations; for they
had no scruples in putting prisoners of war into chains and upon the
benches of the rowers. Humanity--"the law of Christian piety," in the
words of the noble Grotius--forbade the Hollanders from reducing their
captives to such horrible slavery, and they were obliged to content
themselves with condemned criminals, and with the few other wretches whom
abject poverty and the impossibility of earning other wages could induce
to accept the service. And as in the maritime warfare of our own day, the
machinery--engines, wheels, and boilers--is the especial aim of the
enemy's artillery, so the chain-gang who rowed in the waist of the
galley, the living enginry, without which the vessel became a useless
tub, was as surely marked out for destruction whenever a sea-fight took
place.

The Hollanders did not very much favour this species of war-craft, both
by reason of the difficulty of procuring the gang, and because to a true
lover of the ocean and of naval warfare the galley was about as clumsy
and amphibious a production as could be hoped of human perverseness. High
where it should be low. Exposed, flat, and fragile, where elevation and
strength were indispensable--encumbered and top-heavy where it should be
level and compact, weak in the waist, broad at stem and stern, awkward in
manoeuvre, helpless in rough weather, sluggish under sail, although
possessing the single advantage of being able to crawl over a smooth sea
when better an