y as Don Alvario de
Osorio was surrendering La Fere to him, after a seven months' siege,
Ardres was capitulating to De Mexia. The reproaches upon Belin for
cowardice, imbecility, and bad faith, were bitter and general. All his
officers had vehemently protested against the surrender, and Henry at
first talked of cutting off his head. It was hardly probable,
however--had the surrender been really the result of treachery--that the
governor would have put himself, as he did at once in the king's power;
for the garrison marched out of Ardres with the commandant at their head,
banners displayed, drums beating, matches lighted and bullet in mouth,
twelve hundred fighting men strong, besides invalids. Belin was possessed
of too much influence, and had the means of rendering too many pieces of
service to the politic king, whose rancour against Spain was perhaps not
really so intense as was commonly supposed, to meet with the condign
punishment which might have been the fate of humbler knaves.

These successes having been obtained in Normandy, the cardinal with a
force of nearly fifteen thousand men now took the field in Flanders; and,
after hesitating for a time whether he should attack Breda, Bergen,
Ostend, or Gertruydenburg,--and after making occasional feints in various
directions, came, towards the end of June, before Hulst. This rather
insignificant place, with a population of but one thousand inhabitants,
was defended by a strong garrison under command of that eminent and
experienced officer Count Everard Solms. Its defences were made more
complete by a system of sluices, through which the country around could
be laid under water; and Maurice, whose capture of the town in the year
1591 had been one of his earliest military achievements, was disposed to
hold it at all hazards. He came in person to inspect the fortifications,
and appeared to be so eager on the subject, and so likely to encounter
unnecessary hazards, that the States of Holland passed a resolution
imploring him "that he would not, in his heroic enthusiasm and laudable
personal service, expose a life on which the country so much depended to
manifest dangers." The place was soon thoroughly invested, and the usual
series of minings and counter-minings, assaults, and sorties followed, in
the course of which that courageous and corpulent renegade, De Rosne, had
his head taken off by a cannon-ball, while his son, a lad of sixteen, was
fighting by his side. On the 16