hat
well-fortified and opulent city might have held out for months, and only
when the arms and the fraud of the foe without, and of famine within, had
done their work, could it have bowed its head to the conqueror, and
submitted to the ineffable tortures which would be the necessary
punishment of its courage.

Four thousand shots had been fired from the siege-guns upon the city, and
three hundred upon the relieving force.

The besieging army numbered in all nine thousand one hundred and fifty
men of all arms, and they lost during the eighty-five days' siege three
hundred killed and four hundred wounded.

After the conclusion of these operations, and the thorough remodelling of
the municipal government of the important city thus regained to the
republic, Maurice occupied himself with recruiting and refreshing his
somewhat exhausted little army. On the other hand, old Count Mansfeld,
dissatisfied with the impotent conclusion to his attempts, retired to
Brussels to be much taunted by the insolent Fuentes. He at least escaped
very violent censure on the part of his son Charles, for that general,
after his superfluous conquest of Noyon, while returning towards the
Netherlands, far too tardily to succour Gertruydenberg, had been
paralyzed in all his movements by a very extensive mutiny which broke out
among the Spanish troops in the province of Artois. The disorder went
through all its regular forms. A town was taken, an Eletto was appointed.
The country-side was black-mailed or plundered, and the rebellion lasted
some thirteen months. Before it was concluded there was another similar
outbreak among the Italians, together with the Walloons and other
obedient Netherlanders in Hainault, who obliged the city of Mons to
collect nine hundred florins a day for them. The consequence of these
military rebellions was to render the Spanish crown almost powerless
during the whole year, within the provinces nominally subject to its
sway. The cause--as always--was the non-payment of these veterans' wages,
year after year. It was impossible for Philip, with all the wealth of the
Indies and Mexico pouring through the Danaid sieve of the Holy League in
France, to find the necessary funds to save the bronzed and war-worn
instruments of his crimes in the Netherlands from starving and from
revolt.

Meantime there was much desultory campaigning in Friesland. Verdugo and
Frederic van den Berg picked up a few cities, and strong places which ha