s compared to which in calibre and power those cannon and
demi-cannon were but children's toys.

Certainly the human arm was of the same length then as now, a pike-thrust
was as effective as the stab of the most improved bayonet, and when it
came, as it was always the purpose to do, to the close embrace of foemen,
the work was done as thoroughly as it could be in this second half of the
nineteenth century.

Nevertheless it is impossible not to hope that such progress in science
must at last render long wars impossible. The Dutch war of independence
had already lasted nearly forty years. Had the civil war in America upon
the territory of half a continent been waged with the Ostend machinery it
might have lasted two centuries. Something then may have been gained for
humanity by giving war such preter-human attributes as to make its
demands of gold and blood too exhaustive to become chronic.

Yet the loss of human life during that summer and winter was sufficiently
wholesale as compared with the meagre results. Blood flowed in torrents,
for no man could be more free of his soldiers' lives than was the
cardinal-archduke, hurling them as he did on the enemy's works before the
pretence of a practical breach had been effected, and before a reasonable
chance existed of purchasing an advantage at such a price. Five hundred
were killed outright in half-an-hour's assault on an impregnable position
one autumn evening, and lay piled in heaps beneath the Sand Hill
fort-many youthful gallants from Spain and Italy among them, noble
volunteers recognised by their perfumed gloves and golden chains, and
whose pockets were worth rifling. The Dutch surgeons, too, sallied forth
in strength after such an encounter, and brought in great bags filled
with human fat esteemed the sovereignst remedy in the world for wounds
and disease.

Leaders were killed on both sides. Catrici, chief of the Italian
artillery, and Braccamonte, commander of a famous Sicilian legion, with
many less-known captains, lost their lives before the town. The noble
young Chatillon, grandson of Coligny, who had distinguished himself at
Nieuport, fell in the Porcupine fort, his head carried off by a
cannon-ball, which destroyed another officer at his side, and just grazed
the ear of the distinguished Colonel Uchtenbroek. Sir Francis Vere, too,
was wounded in the head by a fragment of iron, and was obliged to leave
the town for six weeks till his wound should heal.

The u