the other southern forts, found, after the chief assault had failed, that
they had gained nothing by their temporary triumph but the certainty of
being butchered. Retreat was impossible, and no quarter was given.
Count Imbec, a noble of great wealth, offered his weight in gold for his
ransom, but was killed by a private soldier, who preferred his blood, or
doubted his solvency. Durango, marshal of the camp, Don Alvarez de
Suarez, and Don Matteo Antonio, sergeant-major and quarter-master-
general, whose adventures as a hostage within the town on Christmas eve
have so recently been related, were also slain.
On the eastern side Bucquoy's attack was an entire failure. His
arrangements were too slowly made, and before he could bring his men to
the assault the water was so high in the Gullet that they refused to lay
their pontoons and march to certain death. Only at lowest ebb, and with
most exquisite skill in fording, would it have been possible to effect
anything like an earnest demonstration or a surprise. Moreover some of
the garrison, giving themselves out as deserters, stole out of the
Spanish Half-moon, which had been purposely almost denuded of its
defenders, towards the enemy's entrenchments, and offered to lead a body
of Spaniards into that ravelin. Bucquoy fell into the trap, so that the
detachment, after a victory as easily effected as that in the southern
forts, found themselves when the fight was over not the captors but the
caught. A few attempted to escape and were driven into the sea; the rest
were massacred.
Fifteen hundred of the enemy's dead were counted and registered by
Auditor Fleming. The whole number of the slain and drowned was reckoned
as high as two thousand, which was at least, a quarter of the whole
besieging army. And so ended this winter night's assault, by which the
archduke had fondly hoped to avenge himself for Vere's perfidy, and to
terminate the war at a blow. Only sixty of the garrison were killed, and
Sir Horace Vere was wounded.
The winter now set in with severe sleet, and snow, and rain, and furious
tempests lashing the sea over the works of besieger and besieged, and for
weeks together paralyzing all efforts of either army. Eight weary months
the siege had lasted; the men in town and hostile camp, exposed to the
inclemency of the wintry trenches, sinking faster before the pestilence
which now swept impartially through all ranks than the soldiers of the
archduke had fallen at Nieuport, or in the recent assault on the Sand
Hill. Of seven thousand hardly three thousand now remained in the
garrison.
Yet still the weary sausage making and wooden castle building went on
along the Gullet and around the old town. The Bredene dyke crept on inch
by inch, but the steady ships of the republic came and went unharmed by
the batteries with which Bucquoy hoped to shut up the New Harbour. The
archduke's works were pushed up nearer on the west, but, as yet, not one
practical advantage had been gained, and the siege had scarcely advanced
a hair's breadth since the 5th of July of the preceding year, when the
armies had first sat down before the place.
The stormy month of March had come, and Vere, being called to service in
the field for the coming season, transferred the command at Ostend to
Frederic van Dorp, a rugged, hard-headed, ill-favoured, stout-hearted
Zealand colonel, with the face of a bull-dog, and with the tenacious grip
of one.
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