the 'Hope' and the 'Fortune,' there had accordingly been made a variety
of less elaborate, but apparently mischievous, efforts against the
bridge. On the whole, however, the object was rather to deceive and
amuse the royalists, by keeping their attention fixed in that quarter,
while a great attack was, in reality, preparing against the Kowenstyn.
That strong barrier, as repeatedly stated, was even a more formidable
obstacle than the bridge to the communication between the beleagured city
and their allies upon the outside. Its capture and demolition, even at
this late period, would open the navigation to all the fleets of Zeeland.

In the undertaking of the 5th of April all had been accomplished that
human ingenuity could devise; yet the triumph had been snatched away even
at the very moment when it was complete. A determined and vigorous
effort was soon to be made upon the Kowenstyn, in the very face of Parma;
for it now seemed obvious that the true crisis was to come upon that
fatal dyke. The great bulwark was three miles long. It reached from
Stabroek in Brabant, near which village Mansfeld's troops were encamped,
across the inundated country, up to the line of the Scheldt. Thence,
along the river-dyke, and across the bridge to Kalloo and Beveren, where
Parma's forces lay, was a continuous fortified road some three leagues in
length; so that the two divisions of the besieging army, lying four
leagues apart, were all connected by this important line.

Could the Kowenstyn be pierced, the water, now divided by that great
bulwark into two vast lakes, would flow together in one continuous sea.
Moreover the Scheldt, it was thought, would, in that case, return to its
own cannel through Brabant, deserting its present bed, and thus leaving
the famous bridge high and dry. A wide sheet of navigable water would
then roll between Antwerp and the Zeeland coasts, and Parma's bridge, the
result of seven months' labour, would become as useless as a child's