were holding
meetings and drawing up comfortable protocols with great regularity.
Colonel Piron, on his part, who had been left with several companies of
veterans to hold Oudenburg and the other forts, and to protect the rear
of the invading army, was accomplishing that object by permitting a large
portion of his force to be absent on foraging parties and general
marauding. When the enemy came before Oudenburg they met with no
resistance. The fort was surrendered at once, and with it fell the lesser
sconces of Breedene, Snaaskerk, and Plassendaal--all but the more
considerable fort St. Albert. The archduke, not thinking it advisable to
delay his march by the reduction of this position, and having possession
of all the other fortifications around Ostend, determined to push forward
next morning at daybreak. He had granted favourable terms of surrender to
the various garrisons, which, however, did not prevent them from being
dearly--every man of them immediately butchered in cold blood.

Thus were these strong and well-manned redoubts, by which Prince Maurice
had hoped to impede for many days the march of a Spanish army--should a
Spanish army indeed be able to take the field at all--already swept off
in an hour. Great was the dismay in 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. Th