degonde declared,
that, but for his cowardice, the fleet of Parma would have fallen into
their hands. The burgomaster himself narrowly escaped becoming a
prisoner, and owed his safety only to the swiftness of his barge, which
was called the "Flying Devil."

The patriots, in order to counteract similar enterprises in future, now
erected a sconce, which they called Fort Teligny; upon the ruptured dyke
of Borght, directly in front of the Borght blockhouse, belonging to the
Spaniards, and just opposite Fort Hoboken. Here, in this narrow passage,
close under the walls of Antwerp, where friends and foes were brought
closely, face to face, was the scene of many a sanguinary skirmish, from
the commencement of the siege until its close.

Still the bridge was believed to be a mere fable, a chimaera. Parma, men
said, had become a lunatic from pride. It was as easy to make the
Netherlands submit to the yoke of the Inquisition as to put a bridle on
the Scheldt. Its depth; breadth, the ice-floods of a northern winter, the
neighbourhood of the Zeeland fleets, the activity of the Antwerp
authorities, all were pledges that the attempt would be signally
frustrated.

And they should have been pledges--more than enough. Unfortunately,
however, there was dissension within, and no chieftain in the field, no
sage in the council, of sufficient authority to sustain the whole burthen
of the war, and to direct all the energies of the commonwealth. Orange
was dead. His son, one day to become the most illustrious military
commander in Europe, was a boy of seventeen, nominally captain-general,
but in reality but a youthful apprentice to his art. Hohenlo was wild,
wilful, and obstinate. Young William Lewis Nassau, already a soldier of
marked abilities, was fully occupied in Friesland, where he was
stadholder, and where he had quite enough to do in making head against
the Spanish governor and general, the veteran Verdugo: Military
operations against Zutphen distracted the attention of the States, which
should have been fixed upon Antwerp.

Admiral Treslong, as we have seen, was refractory, the cause of great
delinquency on the part of the fleets, and of infinite disaster to the
commonwealth. More than all, the French negotiation was betraying the
States into indolence and hesitation; and creating a schism between the
leading politicians of the country. Several thousand French troops, under
Monsieur d'Allaynes, were daily expected, but never arrive