Nothing could be more beautiful as a production of military art, nothing,
to the general reader, more insipid than its details.

On the land side, Hohenlo's headquarters were at Ramsdonck, a village
about a German mile to the east of Gertruydenberg. Maurice himself was
established on the west side of the city. Two bridges constructed across
the Donge facilitated the communications between the two camps, while
great quantities of planks and brush were laid down across the swampy
roads to make them passable for waggon-trains and artillery. The first
care of the young general, whose force was not more than twenty thousand
men, was to protect himself rather than to assail the town.

His lines extended many miles in a circuit around the place, and his
forts, breastworks, and trenches were very numerous.

The river was made use of as a natural and almost impassable ditch of
defence, and windmills were freely employed to pump water into the
shallows in one direction, while in others the outer fields, in quarters
whence a relieving force might be expected, were turned into lakes by the
same machinery. Farther outside, a system of palisade work of caltrops
and man-traps--sometimes in the slang of the day called Turkish
ambassadors--made the country for miles around impenetrable or very
disagreeable to cavally. In a shorter interval than would have seemed
possible, the battlements and fortifications of the besieging army had
risen like an exhalation out of the morass. The city of Gertruydenberg
was encompassed by another city as extensive and apparently as
impregnable as itself. Then, for the first time in that age, men
thoroughly learned the meaning of that potent implement the spade.