n Ostend when Colonel Piron and a few
stragglers brought the heavy news of discomfiture and massacre to the
high and mighty States-General in solemn meeting assembled.

Meanwhile, the States' army before Nieuport, not dreaming of any pending
interruption to their labours, proceeded in a steady but leisurely manner
to invest the city. Maurice occupied himself in tracing the lines of
encampment and entrenchment, and ordered a permanent bridge to be begun
across the narrowest part of the creek, in order that the two parts of
his army might not be so dangerously divided from each other as they now
were, at high water, by the whole breadth and depth of the harbour.
Evening came on before much had been accomplished on this first day of
the siege. It was scarcely dusk when a messenger, much exhausted and
terrified, made his appearance at Count Ernest's tent. He was a straggler
who had made his escape from Oudenburg, and he brought the astounding
intelligence that the archduke had already possession of that position
and of all the other forts. Ernest instantly jumped into a boat and had
himself rowed, together with the messenger, to the headquarters of Prince
Maurice on the other side of the river. The news was as unexpected as it
was alarming. Here was the enemy, who was supposed incapable of mischief
for weeks to come, already in the field, and planted directly on their
communications with Ostend. Retreat, if retreat were desired, was already
impossible, and as to surprising the garrison of Nieuport and so
obtaining that stronghold as a basis for further aggressive operations,
it is very certain that if any man in Flanders was more surprised than
another at that moment it was Prince Maurice himself. He was too good a
soldier not to see at a glance that if the news brought by the straggler
were true, the whole expedition was already a failure, and that, instead
of a short siege and an easy victory, a great battle was to be fought
upon the sands of Nieuport, in which defeat was destruction of the whole
army of the republic, and very possibly of the republic itself.

The stadholder hesitated. He was prone in great emergencies to hesitate
at first, but immovable when his resolution was taken. Vere, who was
asleep in his tent, was sent for and consulted. Most of the generals were
inclined to believe that the demonstrations at Oudenburg, which had been
so successful, were merely a bravado of Rivas, the commander of the
permanent tr