In putting upon the renewed offer the interpretation here alluded to, the Belgian Government were well aware that, apart altogether from its worthlessness as a pledge, the Germans, in the political object which had plainly from the first dictated their treatment of the population, had signally failed. The invaders had relied as their chief instrument on terror. The instrument had broken in their hands. Neither had they as yet gained one real military success. On the contrary, they had suffered either heavy reverses, or had fought at great cost actions yielding no substantial fruits. It was in vain that half the country had been laid waste. So long as the Belgian army, with a strongly fortified base, held the seaboard provinces, the situation of the invaders remained utterly secure. To understand the true position of the Belgian resistance, it is advisable to realise the character of the defences of Antwerp. When, after a prolonged discussion, General Brialmont was, fifty years ago, authorised to modernise the defences of Antwerp and Namur, and to re-fortify Liége, he adopted, in the case of Antwerp, the resources afforded by its situation as a seaport. The older ramparts were demolished, and replaced, at a distance allowing for natural expansion of the city within them, by a new inner ring of massive earthworks between forts, of the form known as a blunted redan. The plan adopted by Brialmont was on the system described by military engineers as the polygonal trace, and his work has always been looked upon as one of the best examples of that system, considered best adapted to meet the range and accuracy of modern siege artillery. But undoubtedly the distinctive feature was presented by the wet ditches, 150 feet broad with some 20 feet depth of water, which surround not only the inner works, but also the line of detached forts built on an average two miles in advance of those works. Brialmont was the first military engineer to carry out this idea, now followed in all present-day fortification. Each of his forts, with a front of 700 yards, mounted 15 howitzers and 120 guns. There were thus on the 9 forts, including Merxem, 1,080 pieces of ordnance. Since Brialmont’s time, however, his outer forts had been connected by an enceinte, now 15 miles or thereabouts in length, strengthened by 18 redoubts, and the second wet ditch. As a third line of defence, there were, at the same time, built the 25 large forts and 13 redoubts, enclosing round the city an area of some 200 square miles. Between the first and second line of defences, the space formed an entrenched camp of, roughly, 17,000 acres in extent.