Two days after the Kowenstyn affair, Alexander sent an expedition under
Count Charles Mansfeld to take possession of the great Bugaboo. The
boat, in which were Count Charles, Count Aremberg, his brother de
Barbancon, and other noble volunteers, met with an accident: a keg of gun
powder accidentally exploding, blowing Aremberg into the water, whence he
escaped unharmed by swimming, and frightfully damaging Mansfeld in the
face. This indirect mischief--the only injury ever inflicted by the
War's End upon the enemy--did not prevent the rest of the party in the
boats from taking possession of the ship, and bringing her in triumph to
the Prince of Parma. After being thoroughly examined and heartily
laughed at by the Spaniards, she was broken up--her cannon, munitions,
and other valuable materials, being taken from her--and then there was an
end of the War's End.

This useless expenditure-against the judgment and entreaties of many
leading personages--was but a type of the difficulties with which Sainte
Aldegonde had been obliged to contend from the first day of the siege to
the last. Every one in the city had felt himself called on to express an
opinion as to the proper measures for defence. Diversity of humours,
popular license, anarchy, did not constitute the best government for a
city beleagured by Alexander Farnese. We have seen the deadly injury
inflicted upon the cause at the outset by the brutality of the butchers,
and the manful struggle which Sainte Aldegonde had maintained against
their cupidity and that of their friends. He had dealt with the thousand
difficulties which rose up around him from day to day, but his best
intentions were perpetually misconstrued, his most strenuous exertions
steadily foiled. It was a city where there was much love of money, and
where commerce--always timid by nature, particularly when controlled by
alien residents--was often the cause of almost abject cowardice.