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Updated: May 8, 2025
Surrounded on the side of Brabant with insurmountable works and moats, and towards Flanders covered by the broad and rapid stream of the Scheldt, it could not be carried by storm; and to blockade a town of such extent seemed to require a land force three times larger than that which the duke had, and moreover a fleet, of which he was utterly destitute.
A Zealand fleet, commanded by Count Hohenlohe, navigated the inundated fields, and made repeated movements against the Cowenstein dam, without, however, attempting a serious attack on it, while another fleet showed itself in the Scheldt, threatening the two coasts alternately with a landing, and occasionally the bridge of boats with an attack.
"The Northmen," says Fauriel, "descended from the north to the south by a sort of natural gradation or ladder. The Scheldt was the first river by the mouth of which they penetrated inland; the Seine was the second; the Loire the third.
The mouth of the Scheldt, and the dangerous shallows off the coast of Newport and Dunkirk, swarmed with their determined and well-seasoned craft, from the flybooter or filibuster of the rivers, to the larger armed vessels, built to confront every danger, and to deal with any adversary.
The first levy of the Belgic cantons exclusive of the Remi, that is, of the country between the Seine and the Scheldt and eastward as far as the vicinity of Rheims and Andernach, from 9000 to 10,000 square miles, is reckoned at about 300,000 men; in accordance with which, if we regard the proportion of the first levy to the whole men capable of bearing arms specified for the Bellovaci as holding good generally, the number of the Belgae capable of bearing arms would amount to 500,000 and the whole population accordingly to at least 2,000,000.
"The Northmen," says M. Fauriel, "descended from the north to the south by a sort of natural gradation or ladder. The Scheldt was the first river by the mouth of which they penetrated inland; the Seine was the second; the Loire the third.
"I am informed," said that Princess, "that through the closing of the Scheldt you are likely to enter into a treaty with the Prince of Parma, the issue of which is very much to be doubted, so far as the maintenance of your privileges is concerned.
McDougal, one of the quartermasters, held the pipe. At the moment the professor sprang from the fife-rail, the hoseman was looking behind him, his attention having been called away from his work by a remark of one of the hands at the brake. "What do you mean, you rascal?" sputtered Mr. Hamblin, attempting to free his mouth of the dirty Scheldt water which had been forced into it.
After the Walcheren expedition, he chid him severely for allowing the English fleet ever to show its face in the Scheldt; for "the fleets of that Power ought to find nothing but rocks of iron" in that river, "which was as important to France as the Thames to England." But the head and front of his offending was that British goods still found their way into Holland.
As I looked back I saw the steamer cast off from the wharf and, swinging slowly out into the river, point her nose down-stream toward Holland. On Friday morning, October 9, General de Guise, the military governor of Antwerp, ordered the destruction of the pontoon-bridge across the Scheldt, which was now the sole avenue of retreat from the city.
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