BOOK ONE,

submerged. So much so that for a very long time, and especially at the beginning of the wars of the Low Countries, this city was held as the Venice of the Dutch; and it would still be so today, if this same element had not returned to it the land it had taken from it, and added to its body an island: but one that is not so large that one cannot defend it, and which in a necessity could not be covered with water by the breaking of the dikes.

Indeed, there would be no need to break them now; on both sides of the city, where the Meuse and the Merwede have their wide and rapid course, two prodigious sluices have been made, at the expense of the City and all the Estates together, which render it unassailable, and which in less than an hour would drown all those who might think of entrenching themselves.

Custrin in the March of Brandenburg.Custrin in my country is one of the places as strong by art and by nature as one can notice in either Germany. A wide marsh begins beside the river, which is swelled there by another that it receives, and embraces the city, returning to the other bank. It leaves in the middle a space that is drier and firmer, where there has been a way to build and erect ramparts. A dike has been raised across this marsh which surrounds this fortress, with such a great struggle of art and nature that one would be quite embarrassed to say which one surmounts the other. Art and necessity demanded a continuous dike, and nature willed that it be disconnected in more than fifty places, obliging one to make as many bridges, which are as many stops as one gives to the enemy (provided that one entrenches each bridge with a good barrier) and meanwhile the dike does not fail to have the width for three chariots abreast and more.

Stralsund in Pomerania.Stralsund in Pomerania, famous for the siege that the Emperor laid to it these past years, would not have sustained so vigorously the impetuosity of Wallenstein, and the artifices of Arnheim; if force and industry could overcome what Nature has undertaken to defend. The Ocean beats the rear of the city, and renders it out of attack from that side; the rest is surrounded by marshes, through which there are three avenues looking toward the mainland of Germany, which are so narrow that one or two companies are sufficient to guard them, or at least to dispute them until tiring the enemy, if a greater and continuous force obliges them to retreat little by little. So that one would hardly find another city in Germany more capable of stopping the victories of the Emperor, and which would have done so more impunely; (a) if experience did not show that it is in the end a sweeter and more assured thing to obey one's own people than strangers; although one must fear him who has the force in hand.

Cities that Nature has fortified by waters and mountains.Finally, there are found places to the strength of which Nature employs water and mountains at the same time. To be brief, I will remark only three of great name in Antiquity. The first is that Mazagas which the historian of Alexander represents in his beautiful style quite accommodately to

(a) Q. Curtius book 6.