he war, and was likely to continue to
be the war for a long time to come; all other military operations being
to a certain degree suspended, as if by general consent of both
belligerants, or rendered subsidiary to the main design. So long as this
little place should be beleaguered it was the purpose of the States, and
of Maurice, acting in harmony with those authorities, to concentrate
their resources so as to strengthen the grip with which the only scrap of
Flanders was held by the republic.

And as time wore on, the supposed necessities of the wealthy province,
which, in political importance, made up a full half of the archduke's
dominions, together with self-esteem and an exaggerated idea of military
honour, made that prelate more and more determined to effect his purpose.

So upon those barren sands was opened a great academy in which the
science and the art of war were to be taught by the most skilful
practitioners to all Europe; for no general, corporal, artillerist,
barber-surgeon, or engineer, would be deemed to know his trade if he had
not fought at Ostend; and thither resorted month after month warriors of
every rank, from men of royal or of noblest blood to adventurers of
lowlier degree, whose only fortune was buckled at their sides. From every
land, of every religion, of every race, they poured into the town or into
the besiegers' trenches. Habsburg and Holstein; Northumberland, Vere, and
Westmoreland; Fairfax and Stuart; Bourbon, Chatillon, and Lorraine;
Bentivoglio, Farnese, Spinola, Grimaldi, Arragon, Toledo, Avila,
Berlaymont, Bucquoy, Nassau, Orange, Solms--such were the historic names
of a few only of the pupils or professors in that sanguinary high school,
mingled with the plainer but well known patronymics of the Baxes,
Meetkerkes, Van Loons, Marquettes, Van der Meers, and Barendrechts, whose
bearers were fighting, as they long had fought, for all that men most
dearly prize on earth, and not to win honour or to take doctors' degrees
in blood. Papist, Calvinist, Lutheran, Turk, Jew and Moor, European,
Asiatic, African, all came to dance in that long carnival of death; and
every incident, every detail throughout the weary siege could if
necessary be reproduced; for so profound and general was the attention
excited throughout Christendom by these extensive operations, and so new
and astonishing were many of the inventions and machines employed--most
of them now as familiar as gunpowder or as antiquated