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No one left the field but Sir Robert Sidney, who had come over from Ostend, from irrepressible curiosity to witness the arrangements, but who would obviously have been guilty of unpardonable negligence had he been absent at such a crisis from the important post of which he was governor for the queen. The arena of the conflict seemed elaborately prepared by the hand of nature.

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.

But their forces were like the sands of the sea and every gap in the ranks of the onrushing host was promptly filled by more Germans. The fighting at Tirlemont and Louvain was described by a citizen of Ostend, who says he witnessed it from a church tower at Tirlemont first and later proceeded to Louvain. He says: "Until luncheon time Tuesday, August 18, Tirlemont was quiet and normal.

"Not very often, I grant, though when allied with your countrymen they fairly beat them on the sands near Ostend, and that over and over again they fought them in their breaches on even terms, and, burghers though they were, beat back Alva's choicest troops." The next morning the army marched forward. Hector rode with the group of young nobles who followed Enghien.

The Duke had other causes for extending his lines far to the west: he desired to cover the roads from Ostend, whence he was expecting reinforcements, and to stretch a protecting wing over the King of France at Ghent. There are many proofs, however, that Wellington was surprised by Napoleon.

His ebullition almost swept him to the point of greeting the two maids who stood respectfully near their mistresses. Then he turned his beaming face upon the Arctic individual with the pink parasol and the palm-leaf fan. "Awfully sorry, Lady Jane, but I really couldn't get to Ostend.

Spinola had displayed excellent generalship, but it is not surprising that the young volunteer should have failed upon his first great field day to defeat Maurice of Nassau and his cousin Lewis William. He withdrew discomfited at last, leaving several hundred dead upon the field, definitely renouncing all hope of relieving Sluys, and retiring by way of Dam to his camp before Ostend.

Amiens was also bombarded on various occasions during the same night. Nine persons of the civilian population were killed and twenty-seven injured. On November 11, 1916, five German machines were claimed to have been brought down by the British. The following day, November 12, 1916, a squadron of British naval aeroplanes attacked the harbor of Ostend.

With the curtain extending from it towards east and west it protected the old town quite up to the little ancient brick church, one of the only two in Ostend. All day long the cannon thundered a bombardment such as had never before been dreamed of in those days, two thousand shots having been distinctly counted, by the burghers.

Another winter had now closed in upon Ostend, while still the siege had scarcely advanced an inch. During the ten months of Governor Dorp's administration, four thousand men had died of wounds or malady within the town, and certainly twice as many in the trenches of the besieging force.