Spinola, a wealthy, gallant, high-born,
brilliant youth, who might have earned distinction, and rendered
infinitely better service to the cause of Spain and the archdukes, had he
not persuaded himself that he had a talent for seamanship. Certainly,
never was a more misplaced ambition, a more unlucky career. Not even in
that age of rash adventure, when grandees became admirals and
field-marshals because they were grandees, had such incapacity been shown
by any restless patrician. Frederic Spinola, at the age of thirty-two, a
landsman and a volunteer, thinking to measure himself on blue water with
such veterans as John Rant, Joost de Moor, and the other Dutchmen and
Zeelanders whom it was his fortune to meet, could hardly escape the doom
which so rapidly befell him.

On board the Black Galley Captain Michelznon, eleven of his officers, and
fifteen of his men were killed; Admiral de Moor was slightly wounded, and
had five of his men killed and twenty wounded; Captain Logier was wounded
in the foot, and lost fifteen killed and twelve wounded.

The number of those killed in Spinola's fleet has been placed as high as
fourteen hundred, including two hundred officers and gentlemen of
quality, besides the crowds of galley-slaves thrown overboard. This was
perhaps an exaggeration. The losses were, however, sufficient to put a
complete atop to the enterprise out of which the unfortunate Spinola had
conceived such extravagant hopes of fame and fortune.

The herring-smacks and other coasters, besides the transports passing to
and from Ostend, sailed thenceforth unmolested by any galleys from Sluys.
One unfortunate sloop, however, in moving out from the beleaguered city,
ran upon some shoals before getting out of the Gullet and thus fell a
prize to the besiegers. She was laden with nothing more precious than
twelve wounded soldiers on their way to the hospitals at Flushing. These
prisoners were immediately hanged, at the express command of the
archduke, because they had been taken on the sea where, according to his
highness, there were no laws of war.

The stadholder, against his will--for Maurice was never cruel--felt
himself obliged to teach the cardinal better jurisprudence and better
humanity for the future. In order to show him that there was but one
belligerent law on sea and on land, he ordered two hundred Spanish
prisoners within his lines to draw lots from an urn in which twelve of
the tickets were inscribed with the fat