t believe that the bridge could be completed.
His fears were that the city would be ruined rather by the cessation of
its commerce than by want of daily food. Already, after the capture of
Liefkenshoek and the death of Orange, the panic among commercial people
had been so intense that seventy or eighty merchants, representing the
most wealthy mercantile firms in Antwerp, made their escape from the
place, as if it had been smitten with pestilence, or were already in the
hands of Parma. All such refugees were ordered to return on peril of
forfeiting their property. Few came back, however, for they had found
means of converting and transferring their funds to other more secure
places, despite the threatened confiscation. It was insinuated that
Holland and Zeeland were indifferent to the fate of Antwerp, because in
the sequel the commercial cities of those Provinces succeeded to the vast
traffic and the boundless wealth which had been forfeited by the
Brabantine capital. The charge was an unjust one. At the very
commencement of the siege the States of Holland voted two hundred
thousand florins for its relief; and, moreover, these wealthy refugees
were positively denied admittance into the territory of the United
States, and were thus forced to settle in Germany or England. This
cessation of traffic was that which principally excited the anxiety of
Aldegonde. He could not bring himself to believe in the possibility of a
blockade, by an army of eight or ten thousand men, of a great and wealthy
city, where at least twenty thousand citizens were capable of bearing
arms. Had he thoroughly understood the deprivations under which Alexander
was labouring, perhaps he would have been even more confident as to the
result.

"With regard to the affair of the river Scheldt," wrote Parma to Philip,
"I should like to send your Majesty a drawing of the whole scheme; for
the work is too vast to be explained by letters. The more I examine it,
the more astonished I am that it should have been conducted to this
point; so many forts, dykes, canals, new inventions, machinery, and
engines, have been necessarily required."

He then proceeded to enlighten the King--as he never failed to do in all
his letters--as to his own impoverished, almost helpless condition.
Money, money, men! This was his constant cry. All would be in vain, he
said, if he were thus neglected. "'Tis necessary," said he, "for your
Majesty fully to comprehend, that henceforth th