as much as the best soldiers in the world could do."

The frost broke up by the end of February. Count Bossu, who had been
building a fleet of small vessels in Amsterdam, soon afterwards succeeded
in entering the lake with a few gun-boats, through a breach which he had
made in the Overtoom, about half a league from that city. The possession
of the lake was already imperilled. The Prince, however, had not been
idle, and he, too, was soon ready to send his flotilla to the mere.
At the same time, the city of Amsterdam was in almost as hazardous a
position as Harlem. As the one on the lake, so did the other depend upon
its dyke for its supplies. Should that great artificial road which led
to Muyden and Utrecht be cut asunder, Amsterdam might be starved as soon
as Harlem. "Since I came into the world," wrote Alva, "I have never,
been in such anxiety. If they should succeed in cutting off the
communication along the dykes, we should have to raise the siege of
Harlem, to surrender, hands crossed, or to starve." Orange was fully
aware of the position of both places, but he was, as usual, sadly
deficient in men and means. He wrote imploringly to his friends in
England, in France, in Germany. He urged his brother Louis to bring a
few soldiers, if it were humanly possible. "The whole country longs for
you," he wrote to Louis, "as if you were the archangel Gabriel."

The Prince, however, did all that it was possible for man, so hampered,
to do. He was himself, while anxiously writing, hoping, and waiting for
supplies of troops from Germany or France, doing his best with such
volunteers as he could raise. He was still established at Sassenheim, on
the south of the city, while Sonoy with his slender forces was encamped
on the north. He now sent that general with as large a party as he could
muster to attack the Diemerdyk. His men entrenched themselves as
strongly as they could between the Diemer and the Y, at the same time