There stood the bridge which the citizens had ridiculed while it was growing before their faces.

There scowled the Kowenstyn--black with cannon, covered all over with fortresses which the butchers had so sedulously preserved.

From Parma's camp at Beveren and Kalloo a great fortified road led across the river and along the fatal dyke all the way to the entrenchments at Stabroek, where Mansfeld's army lay.

Grim Mondragon held the "holy cross" and the whole Kowenstyn in his own iron grasp.

A chain of forts, built and occupied by the contending hosts of the patriots and the Spaniards, were closely packed together along both banks of the Scheldt, nine miles long from Antwerp to Lillo, and interchanged perpetual cannonades.