THE HEROIC DEFENCE OF ITS CITIZENS. HE consternation | placing a large portion of his army on the left bank of the Scheldt, the other on the right. He threw a stupendous bridge over the stream. He made piers or estoccades which reduced the river to half its original breadth, and the cannon with which they were mounted rendered the passage extremely dangerous to hostile vessels. But, to fill up this strait, a considerable number of boats were fastened together by chainhooks and anchors; and being manned and armed with cannon, they were moored in the interval between the estoccades. During these operations, a canal was cut between the Moer and Calloo; by which means a communication was formed with Ghent, which ensured a supply of ammunition and provisions. The works of the bridge, which was two thousand four hundred feet in length, were constructed with such strength and solidity, that they braved the winds, the floods, and the ice of the whole winter. caused by the news of William's death soon yielded to the firmness natural to a people inured to suffering and calamity. The United Provinces rejected at once the overtures made by the Prince of Parma to induce them to obedience. They seemed proud to show that their fate did not depend on that of one man. He therefore turned his attention to the most effective means of obtaining results by force, which he found it impossible to secure by persuasion. He proceeded vigorously to the reduction of the chief towns of Flanders, the conquest of which would give him possession of the entire province, no army now remaining to oppose him in the field. He soon obliged Ypres and Termonde to surrender; and Ghent, forced by famine, at length yielded on reasonable terms. The most severe was the utter abolition of the reformed religion; by which a large portion of the population was driven to the alternative of exile; and they passed over in crowds to Holland and Zealand, not half of the inhabitants remaining behind. Mechlin, and finally Brussels, worn out by a fruitless resistance, followed the example of the rest; and thus, within a year after the death of William of Nassau, the power of Spain was again established in the whole province of Flanders, and the others which comprise what is in modern days generally denominated Belgium. The siege of Antwerp, which Parma undertook with eighty thousand men, was a more difficult undertaking. He completely surrounded the city with troops; The people of Antwerp at first laughed to scorn the whole of these stupendous preparations; but when they found that the bridge resisted the natural elements, by which they doubted not it would have been destroyed, they began to tremble in the anticipation of famine; yet they vigorously prepared for their defence, and rejected the overtures made by the Prince of Parma even at this advanced stage of his proceedings. Ninety-seven pieces of cannon now defended the bridge; besides which, thirty large barges at each side of the river guarded its extremities; and forty ships of war formed a fleet of protection, constantly ready to meet any attack from the besieged. They, seeing the Scheldt thus really closed up, and all communication with Zealand impossible, felt their whole safety to depend on the destruction of the bridge. The states of Zealand now sent forward an expedition, which, joined with some ships from Lillo, gave new courage to the besieged; and everything was prepared for their great attempt. An Italian engineer, named Giambelli, was at this time in Antwerp, and by his talents had long protracted the defence. He has the chief merit of being the inventor of those terrible fireships which gained the title of "infernal machines"; and with some of these formidable instruments and the Zealand fleet, the long-projected attack was at length made. Early on the night of the 4th of April, the Prince of Parma and his army were amazed by the spectacle of three huge masses of flame floating down the river, accompanied by numerous lesser appearances of a similar kind, and bearing directly against the prodigious barrier, which had cost months of labour to him and his troops, and immense sums of money to the state. The whole surface of the Scheldt presented one sheet of fire; the country all round was as visible as at noon; the flags, the arms of the soldiers, and every object on the bridge, in the fleet, or the forts, stood out clearly to view; and the pitchy darkness of the sky gave increased effect to the marked distinctness of all. Astonishment was soon succeeded by consternation, when one of the three machines burst with a terrible noise before they reached their intended mark, but time enough to offer a sample of their nature. The Prince of Parma, with numerous officers and soldiers, rushed to the bridge, to witness the effects of this explosion; and just then a second and still larger fire-ship, having burst through the flying bridge of boats, struck against one of the estoccades. Alexander, unmindful of danger, used every exertion of his authority to stimulate the sailors in their attempts to clear away the monstrous machine which threatened destruction to all within its reach. within its reach. Happily for him, an ensign who was near, forgetting in his general's peril all rules of discipline and forms of ceremony, actually forced him from the estoccade. He had not put his foot on the river bank when the machine blew up. The effects were such as really baffle description. The bridge was burst through; the estoccade was shattered almost to atoms, and, with all that it supported-men, cannon, and the huge machinery employed in the various works-dispersed in the air. The cruel Marquis of Roubais, many other officers, and eight hundred soldiers, perished, in all varieties of death-by flood, or flame, or the horrid wounds. from the missiles with which the terrible machine was over-charged. Fragments of bodies and limbs were flung far and wide; and many gallant soldiers were destroyed, without a vestige of the human form being left to prove that they had ever existed. Had the Zealand fleet come in time to the spot, the whole plan might have been crowned with success; but by some want of concert or accidental delay, it did not appear, and consequently the beleaguered town received no relief. An attempt to flood the country was unsuccessful; but one more fruitless attempt was made to destroy the bridge and raise the siege, by means of an enormous vessel, bearing the presumptuous title of The End of the War. But this floating citadel ran aground without producing any effect; and the gallant governor of Antwerp, the celebrated Philip de Saint Aldegonde, was forced to capitulate on the 16th of August, after a siege of fourteen months. The reduction of Antwerp was considered a miracle of perseverance and courage. The Prince of Parma was elevated by his success to the highest pinnacle of renown; and Philip, on receiving the news, displayed a burst of joy such as rarely varied his cold and gloomy reserve. From one example learn all, says a famous Latin saying. The siege of Antwerp is but one, and perhaps not the most terrible of the sieges of the Netherlands. Again and again were old and luxurious cities, beautified by the labour of centuries, surrounded, taken, and, in many cases, delivered over to the wrath of a brutal soldiery. Our illustrations are taken from incidents that occurred again and again in Leyden, and Maestricht, and Antwerp, not to mention other places. In the one a lady of the Netherlands throws herself in vain at the feet of the Spanish commander, and in vain implores the pardon of one condemned to die for the heinous offence of bravely defending his native town against a foreign foe! The other illustration shows a more successful way of opening a means of escape to the destined victim. A bribe is offered to the not too faithful sentinel who guards the prison doors. He may for a time feign reluctance, but it is only that the amount may be as large as possible. The golden key is found able to open the prison doors, and the captive regains life and liberty! THE ELDER PITT. CHIEF POINTS IN HIS LIFE. E sometimes hear other hand, is a rude though striking the expression, a "Heaven-born minister" used. By this, we suppose, is meant a man who is of his very nature a "king of men," as old Homer says of Agamemnon, who is formed to command, and who finds his proper vocation in ruling vast assemblages of his fellowmortals, in directing the resources of great empire, in using armies and Heets but as the instruments of his pleasures. Such a man was William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, who, at one of the most critical periods of Britain's history, directed her affairs. Yet he was a "strangely mixed character. He was undoubtedly a great man. But his was not a complete and well-proportioned greatness. The public life of Hampden or of Somers resembles a regular drama, which can be criticised as a whole, and every scene of which is to be viewed in connection with the main action. The public life of Pitt, on the piece, a piece abounding in incongruities, a piece without any unity of plan, but redeemed by some noble passages, the effect of which is increased by the tameness or extravagance of what precedes and of what follows. His opinions were unfixed. His conduct at some of the most important conjunctures of his life was evidently determined by pride and resentment. He had one fault, which of all human faults is most rarely found in company with true greatness. He was extremely affected. He was an almost solitary instance of a man of real genius, and of a brave, lofty, and commanding spirit, without simplicity of character. He was an actor in the Closet, an actor at Council, an actor in Parliament; and even in private society he could not lay aside his theatrical tones and attitudes. We know that one of the most distinguished of his partisans often complained that he could never obtain admittance to Lord Chatham's room till everything was ready for the presentation, till the dresses and properties were all correctly disposed, till the light was thrown with 'Mid such abasement, what he had received In the age of Dodington and Sandys, it was something to have a man who might perhaps under some strong excitement, have been tempted to ruin his country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer from her; a man whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire of gain, but from a fierce thirst for power, for glory, and for vengeance. History owes to him this attestation, that at a time when anything short of direct embezzlement of the public money was considered as quite fair in public men, he showed the most scrupulous disinterestedness; that, at a time when it seemed to be generally taken for granted that Government could be upheld only by the basest and most immoral arts, he appealed to the better and nobler parts of human nature; that he made a brave and splendid attempt to do, by means of public opinion, what no other statesman of his day thought it possible to do, except by means of corruption; that he looked for support, not, like the Pelhams, to a strong aristocratical connection, not, like Bute, to the personal favour of the sovereign, but to the middle class of Englishmen; that he inspired that class with a firm confidence in his integrity and ability; that, backed by them, he forced an unwilling court and an unwilling oligarchy to admit him to an ample share of power; and that he used his power in such a manner as clearly proved him to have sought it, not for the sake of profit or patronage, but from a wish to establish for himself a great and durable reputation by means of eminent services rendered to the State. It was very much by his rank as an orator that Pitt held his power, and great as even now the power of an orator is, it was very much greater then, and this for a very simple reason. In our time, the audience of a member of Parliament is the nation. The three or four hundred persons who may be present while a speech is delivered may be pleased or disgusted by the voice and action of the orator; but, in the reports which are read the next day by hundreds of thousands, the difference between the noblest and the meanest figure, between the richest and the shrillest tones, between the most graceful and the most uncouth gesture, altogether vanishes. A hundred years ago, scarcely any report of what passed within the walls of the House of Comnions was suffered to get abroad. In those times, therefore, the impression which a speaker might make on the persons who actually heard him was everything. His fame out of doors depended entirely on the report of those who were within the doors. In the Parliaments of that time, therefore, as in the ancient commonwealths, those qualifications which enhance the immediate effect of a speech, were far more important ingredients in the composition of an orator than at present. All those qualifications Pitt possessed in the highest degree. On the stage, he would have been the finest Brutus or Coriolanus ever seen. Those who saw him in his decay, when his health |