and furnishing horses to the governor.

In the besieging army five or six hundred had been killed and many
wounded, but not in numbers bearing the same proportion to the slain as
in modern battles.

The siege had lasted forty-four days. When it was over, and men came out
from the town to examine at leisure the prince's camp and his field of
operations, they were astounded at the amount of labor performed in so
short a time. The oldest campaigners confessed that they never before
had understood what a siege really was, and they began to conceive a
higher respect for the art of the engineer than they had ever done
before. "Even those who were wont to rail at science and labour," said
one who was present in the camp of Maurice, "declared that the siege
would have been a far more arduous undertaking had it not been for those
two engineers, Joost Matthes of Alost, and Jacob Kemp of Gorcum. It is
high time to take from soldiers the false notion that it is shameful to
work with the spade; an error which was long prevalent among the
Netherlanders, and still prevails among the French, to the great
detriment of the king's affairs, as may be seen in his sieges."

Certainly the result of Henry's recent campaign before Rouen had proved
sufficiently how much better it would have been for him had there been
some Dutch Joosts and Jacobs with their picks and shovels in his army at
that critical period. They might perhaps have baffled Parma as they had
done Verdugo.

Without letting the grass grow under his feet, Maurice now led his army
from Steenwyck to Zwol and arrived on the 26th July before Coeworden.