lt 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 unfortunate inhabitants--men, women, and children--were of course
exposed to perpetual danger, and very many were killed. Their houses were
often burned to the ground, in which cases the English auxiliaries were
indefatigable, not in rendering assistance, but in taking possession of
such household goods as the flames had spared. Nor did they always wait
for such opportunities, but were apt, at the death of an eminent burgher,
to constitute themselves at once universal legatees. Thus, while honest
Bartholomew Tysen, a worthy citizen grocer, was standing one autumn
morning at his own door, a stray cannon-ball took off his head, and
scarcely had he been put in a coffin before his house was sacked from
garret to cellar and all the costly spices, drugs, and other valuable
merchandize of his warehouse--the chief magazine in the town--together
with all his household furniture, appropriated by those London warriors.
Bartholomew's friends and relatives appealed to Sir Francis Vere for
justice, but were calmly informed by that general that Ostend was like a
stranded ship, on its beamends on a beach, and that it was impossible not
to consider it at the mercy of the wreckers. So with this highly
figurative view of the situation from the lips of the governor of the
place and the commander-in-chief of the English as well as the Dutch
garrison, they were fain to go home and bur