The town itself--the small and very insignificant kernel which lay
enclosed in such a complicated series of wrappings and layers of
defences--seemed as far off as if it were suspended in the sky.
The old haven or canal, no longer navigable for ships, still served as
an admirable moat which the assailants had not yet succeeded in laying
entirely dry. It protected the counterscarp, and was itself protected by
an exterior aeries of works, while behind the counterscarp was still
another ditch, not so broad nor deep as the canal, but a formidable
obstacle even after the counterscarp should be gained. There were nearly
fifty forts and redoubts in these lines, of sufficient importance to have
names which in those days became household words, not only in the
Netherlands, but in Europe; the siege of Ostend being the one military
event of Christendom, so long as it lasted. These names are of course as
much forgotten now as those of the bastions before Nineveh. A very few
of them will suffice to indicate the general aspect of the operations.
On the extreme southwest of Ostend had been in peaceful times a polder--
the general term to designate a pasture out of which the sea-water had
been pumped--and the forts in that quarter were accordingly called by
that name, as Polder Half-moon, Polder Ravelin, or great and little
Polder Bulwark, as the case might be. Farther on towards the west, the
north-west, and the north, and therefore towards the beach, were the West
Ravelin, West Bulwark, Moses's Table, the Porcupine, the Hell's Mouth,
the old church, and last and most important of all, the Sand Hill. The
last-named work was protected by the Porcupine and Hell's Mouth, was the
key to the whole series of fortifications, and was connected by a curtain
with the old church, which was in the heart of the old town.

Spinola had assumed command in October, but the winter was already
closing in with its usual tempests and floods before there had been time