Whereas, by the long continuance of the war, he
so broke the very heart of the Spanish monarchy, so absolutely and
irrecoverably impoverished them, that they have ever since languished
of the disease, till they are fallen from the most powerful, to be the
most despicable nation in the world.
The prodigious charge the King of Spain was at in losing the seven
provinces, broke the very spirit of the nation; and that so much,
that all the wealth of their Peruvian mountains have not been able to
retrieve it; King Philip having often declared that war, besides his
Armada for invading England, had cost him 370,000,000 of ducats, and
4,000,000 of the best soldiers in Europe; whereof, by an unreasonable
Spanish obstinacy, above 60,000 lost their lives before Ostend, a town
not worth a sixth part either of the blood or money it cost in a siege
of three years; and which at last he had never taken, but that Prince
Maurice thought it not worth the charge of defending it any longer.
However, I say, their way of fighting in Holland did not relish with
me at all. The prince lay a long time before a little fort called
Schenkenschanz, which the Spaniard took by surprise, and I thought he
might have taken it much sooner.
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