t 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 famine were staring the city in the face, and the
maximum now stood sentinel against the gate, to prevent the admission of
food. The traffic ceased without a struggle. Parma himself could not have
better arranged the blockade.

Meantime a vast and almost general inundation had taken place. The aspect
of the country for many miles around was strange and desolate. The
sluices had been opened in the neighbourhood of Saftingen, on, the
Flemish side, so that all the way from Hulst the waters were out, and
flowed nearly to the gates of Antwerp. A wide and shallow sea rolled over
the fertile plains, while church-steeples, the tops of lofty trees, and
here and there the turrets of a castle, scarcely lifted themselves above
the black waters; the peasants' houses, the granges, whole rural
villages, having entirely disappeared. The high grounds of Doel, of
Kalloo, and Beveren, where Alexander was established, remained out of
reach of the flood. Far below, on the opposite side of the river, other
sluices had been opened, and the sea had burst over the wide, level
plain. The villages of Wilmerdonk, Orderen, Ekeren, were changed to
islands in the ocean, while all the other hamlets, for miles around, were
utterly submerged.

Still, however, the Blaw-garen Dyke and its companion the Kowenstyn
remained obstinately above the waters, forming a present and more fatal
obstruction to the communication between Antwerp and Zeeland than would
be furnished even by the threatened and secretly-advancing bridge across
the Scheldt. Had Orange's prudent advice been taken, the city had been
safe. Over the prostrate dykes, whose destruction he had so warmly urged,
the ocean would have rolled quite to the gates of Antwerp, and it would
have been as easy to bridge the North Sea as to control the free
navigation of the patriots over so wide a surface.

When it was too late, the butchers, and colonels, and captains, became
penitent enough. An order was passed, by acclamation, in November, to do
what Orange had recommended in June. It was decreed that the Blaw-garen
and the Kowenstyn should be pierced. Alas, the hour had long gone by.
Alexander of Parma was not the man to undertake the construction of a
bridge across t