To wrench it from him would be no child's play.

Five new strong redoubts upon the dyke, and five or six thousand Spaniards established there, made the enterprise more formidable than it would have been in June.

It had been better to sacrifice the twelve thousand oxen.

Twelve thousand Hollanders might now be slaughtered, and still the dyke remain above the waves.
Here was the key to the fate of Antwerp.
On the other hand, the opening of the Saftingen Sluice had done Parma's work for him.

Even there, too, Orange had been prophetic.