Here, in this narrow passage, close under the walls of Antwerp, where friends and foes were brought closely, face to face, was the scene of many a sanguinary skirmish, from the commencement of the siege until its close.
Still the bridge was believed to be a mere fable, a chimaera.

Parma, men said, had become a lunatic from pride.

It was as easy to make the Netherlands submit to the yoke of the Inquisition as to put a bridle on the Scheldt.

Its depth; breadth, the ice-floods of a northern winter, the neighbourhood of the Zeeland fleets, the activity of the Antwerp authorities, all were pledges that the attempt would be signally frustrated.
And they should have been pledges--more than enough.

Unfortunately, however, there was dissension within, and no chieftain in the field, no sage in the council, of sufficient authority to sustain the whole burthen of the war, and to direct all the energies of the commonwealth.