On each side, above and below the bridge, at a moderate distance--a bow
shot--was anchored a heavy, raft floating upon empty barrels. Each raft
was composed of heavy timbers, bound together in bunches of three, the
spaces between being connected by ships' masts and lighter spar-work, and
with a tooth-like projection along the whole outer edge, formed of strong
rafters, pointed and armed with sharp prongs and hooks of iron. Thus a
serried phalanx, as it were, of spears stood ever on guard to protect the
precious inner structure. Vessels coming from Zeeland or Antwerp, and
the floating ice-masses, which were almost as formidable, were obliged to
make their first attack upon these dangerous outer defences. Each raft;
floating in the middle of the stream, extended twelve hundred, and fifty-
two feet across, thus protecting the whole of the bridge of boats and a
portion of that resting upon piles.
Such was the famous bridge of Parma. The magnificent undertaking has
been advantageously compared with the celebrated Rhine-bridge of Julius
Caesar. When it is remembered; however; that the Roman work was
performed in summer, across a river only half as broad as the Scheldt,
free from the disturbing, action of the tides; and flowing through an
unresisting country; while the whole character of the structure; intended
only to, serve for the single passage of an army, was far inferior to the
massive solidity of Parma's bridge; it seems not unreasonable to assign
the superiority to the general who had surmounted all the obstacles of a
northern winter, vehement ebb and flow from the sea, and enterprising and
desperate enemies at every point.
When the citizens, at last, looked upon the completed fabric, converted
from the "dream," which they had pronounced it to be, into a terrible
reality; when they saw the shining array of Spanish and Italian legions
marching and counter-marching upon their new road; and trampling, as it
were; the turbulent river beneath their feet; when they witnessed the
solemn military spectacle with which the Governor-General celebrated his
success, amid peals of cannon and shouts of triumph from his army, they
bitterly bewailed their own folly. Yet even then they could hardly
believe that the work had been accomplished by human agency, but they
loudly protested that invisible demons had been summoned to plan and
perfect this fatal and preter-human work. They were wrong. There had
been but one demon--one clear, lofty intelligence, inspiring a steady
and untiring hand. The demon was the intellect of Alexander Farnese;
but it had been assisted in its labour by the hundred devils of envy,
covetousness, jealousy, selfishness, distrust, and discord, that had
housed, not, in his camp, but in the ranks of those who were contending
for their hearths and altars.
And thus had the Prince arrived at success in spite of every obstacle.
He took a just pride in the achievement, yet he knew by how many dangers
he was still surrounded, and he felt hurt at his sovereign's neglect.
"The enterprise at Antwerp," he wrote to Philip on the day the bridge was
completed, "is so great and heroic that to celebrate it would require me
to speak more at large than I like, to do, for fear of being tedious to
your Majesty. What I will say, is that the labours and difficulties have
been every day so, great, that if your Majesty knew them, you would
estimate, what we have done more highly than-you do; and not forget us so
utterly, leaving us to die of hunger."
He considered the fabric in itself almost impregnable, provided he were
furnished with the means to maintain what he had so painfully
constructed.
"The whole is in such condition," said he, "that in opinion of all
competent military judges it would stand though all Holland and Zeeland
should come to destroy our, palisades. Their attacks must be made at
immense danger, and disadvantage, so severely can we play upon them with
our artillery and musketry. Every boat is, garnished with the most
dainty captains and soldiers, so that if the enemy should attempt to
assail us now, they would come back with broken heads."
Yet in the midst of his apparent triumph he had, at times, almost despair
in his heart. He felt really at the last gasp. His troops had dwindled
to the mere shadow of an army, and they were forced to live almost upon
air. The cavalry had nearly vanished. The garrisons in the different
cities were starving. The burghers had no food for the soldiers nor for
themselves. "As for the rest of the troops," said Alexander, "they are
stationed where they have nothing to subsist upon, save salt water and
the dykes, and if the Lord does not grant a miracle, succour, even if
sent by your Majesty, will arrive too late." He assured his master, that
he could not go on more than five or six days longer, that he had been
feeding his soldiers for a long time from hand to mouth, and that it
would soon be impossible for him to keep his troops together. If he did
not disband them they would run away.
His pictures were most dismal, his supplications for money very moving
but he never alluded to himself. All his anxiety, all his tenderness,
were for his soldiers. "They must have food," he said: "'Tis impossible
to sustain them any longer by driblets, as I have done for a long time.
Yet how can I do it without money? And I have none at all, nor do I see
where to get a single florin."
But these revelations were made only to his master's most secret ear.
His letters, deciphered after three centuries, alone make manifest the
almost desperate condition in which the apparently triumphant general was
placed, and the facility with which his antagonists, had they been well
guided and faithful to themselves, might have driven him into the sea.
But to those adversaries he maintained an attitude of serene and smiling
triumph. A spy, sent from the city to obtain intelligence for the
anxious burghers, had gained admission into his lines, was captured and
brought before the Prince. He expected, of course, to be immediately
hanged. On the contrary, Alexander gave orders that he should be
conducted over every part of the encampment. The forts, the palisades,
the bridge, were all to be carefully exhibited and explained to him as if
he had been a friendly visitor entitled to every information. He was
requested to count the pieces of artillery in the forts, on the bridge,
in the armada. After thoroughly studying the scene he was then dismissed
with a safe-conduct to the city.
"Go back to those who sent you," said the Prince. "Convey to them the
information in quest of which you came. Apprize them of every thing
which you have inspected, counted, heard explained. Tell them further,
that the siege will never be abandoned, and that this bridge will be my
sepulcher or my pathway into Antwerp."
And now the aspect of the scene was indeed portentous. The chimera had
become a very visible bristling reality. There stood the bridge which
the citizens had ridiculed while it was growing before their faces.
There scowled the Kowenstyn--black with cannon, covered all over with
fortresses which the butchers had so sedulously preserved. From Parma's
camp at Beveren and Kalloo a great fortified road led across the river
and along the fatal dyke all the way to the entrenchments at Stabroek,
where Mansfeld's army lay. Grim Mondragon held the "holy cross" and the
whole Kowenstyn in his own iron grasp. A chain of forts, built and
occupied by the contending hosts of the patriots and the Spaniards, were
closely packed together along both banks of the Scheldt, nine miles long
from Antwerp to Lillo, and interchanged perpetual cannonades. The
country all around, once fertile as a garden, had been changed into a
wild and wintry sea where swarms of gun-boats and other armed vessels
manoeuvred and contended with each other over submerged villages and
orchards, and among half-drowned turrets and steeples. Yet there rose
the great bulwark--whose early destruction would have made all this
desolation a blessing--unbroken and obstinate; a perpetual obstacle to
communication between Antwerp and Zeeland. The very spirit of the
murdered Prince of Orange seemed to rise sadly and reproachfully out of
the waste of waters, as if to rebuke the men who had been so deaf to his
solemn warnings.
Brussels, too, wearied and worn, its heart sick with hope deferred, now
fell into despair as the futile result of the French negotiation became
apparent. The stately and opulent city had long been in a most abject
condition. Many of its inhabitants attempted to escape from the horrors
of starving by flying from its walls. Of the fugitives, the men were
either scourged back by the Spaniards into the city, or hanged up along
the road-side. The women were treated, leniently, even playfully, for it
was thought an excellent jest to cut off the petticoats of the
unfortunate starving creatures up to their knees, and then command them
to go back and starve at home with their friends and fellow-citizens. A
great many persons literally died of hunger. Matrons with large families
poisoned their children and themselves to avoid the more terrible death
by starving. At last, when Vilvoorde was taken, when the baseness of the
French King was thoroughly understood, when Parma's bridge was completed
and the Scheldt bridled, Brussels capitulated on as favourable terms as
could well have been expected.
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College of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all
Military virtue in the support of an infamous cause
Not distinguished for their docility
Repentance, as usual, had come many hours too late