Dutch galleys, and the fame of reducing Ostend was reserved
for Ambrose. This afterward celebrated general had undertaken
the command at the earnest entreaties of the archduke and the
king of Spain, and by the firmness and vigor of his measures
he revived the courage of the worn-out assailants of the place.
Redoubled attacks and multiplied mines at length reduced the town
to a mere mass of ruin, and scarcely left its still undaunted
garrison sufficient footing on which to prolong their desperate
defence. Ostend at length surrendered, on the 22d of September,
1604, and the victors marched in over its crumbled walls and
shattered batteries. Scarcely a vestige of the place remained
beyond those terrible evidences of destruction. Its ditches,
filled up with the rubbish of ramparts, bastions, and redoubts,
left no distinct line of separation between the operations of
its attack and its defence. It resembled rather a vast sepulchre
than a ruined town, a mountain of earth and rubbish, without a
single house in which the wretched remnant of the inhabitants
could hide their heads--a monument of desolation on which victory
might have sat and wept.

During the progress of this memorable siege Queen Elizabeth of
England had died, after a long and, it must be pronounced, a
glorious reign; though the glory belongs rather to the nation
than to the monarch, whose memory is marked with indelible stains
of private cruelty, as in the cases of Essex and Mary Queen of
Scots, and of public wrongs, as in that of her whole system of
tyranny in Ireland. With respect to the United Provinces she was
a harsh protectress and a capricious ally. She in turns advised
them to remain faithful to the old impurities of religion and to
their intolerable king; refused to incorporate them with her
own states; and then used her best efforts for subjecting them to
her sway. She seemed to take pleasure in the uncertainty to which
she reduced them, by constant demands for payment of her loans,
and threats of making peace with Spain. Thus the states-general
were not much affected by the news of her death; and so rejoiced
were they at the accession of James I. to the throne of England
that all the bells of Holland rang out merry peals; bonfires
were set blazing all over the country; a letter of congratulation
was despatched to the new monarch; and it was speedily followed
by a solemn embassy composed of Prince Frederick Henry, the grand
pensionary De Barneveldt