Six years later the Duke d'Alençon, who had been made nominal sovereign over the Low Countries by William the Silent, planned to treacherously attack and sack the city with his French soldiers, some three thousand, five hundred strong. This time, however, the citizens were not caught napping and when the tocsin in the cathedral called the alarm the burghers rushed out in thousands. The French swashbucklers proved to be less stubborn fighters than the Spanish veterans and soon were driven back in a confused mass to the city gates, most of them being killed and the cowardly Duke only saving himself by flight. This episode has been derisively called the French Fury. It happened January 17, 1583. The following year Alexander Farnese, the Duke of Parma--and the son of the Duchess of Parma, whose career as Regent of the Netherlands was briefly described in the chapter on Audenaerde, her birthplace--determined to besiege Antwerp, which, since the Spanish Fury, had fallen into the hands of the revolted Provinces. Unfortunately for its defenders, William the Silent had just died at the hands of an assassin and his plans for the protection of the city by flooding all of the marshes surrounding it were not followed. The butchers opposed flooding all of their pasture lands and the important Kowenstein Dyke was not cut. The Prince of Parma, who was the greatest military leader of his age, swiftly captured the forts on the Flemish side of the river, seized the Kowenstein Dyke--which extended on the Brabant side from a point opposite Calloo to Starbroeck--and began to build a bridge across the river itself. This daring project, if successful, would completely isolate Antwerp from the sea and its Dutch allies and render certain its ultimate subjection by starvation. The bridge was built partly on piles, as far out as the water was sufficiently shallow, then the intervening gap was spanned by means of thirty-two large vessels anchored at both ends and lashed together by chains and heavy cables. The structure was completed in February, 1585, to the amazement of the besieged burghers and the great joy of the Prince's army. It would seem a small affair to the pontoon bridge builders of to-day, being two thousand, four hundred feet long and twelve feet wide, but at that time it was deemed one of the most notable achievements ever known. The defenders of the city sent huge fireships down the river to destroy the bridge. One of these actually exploded against the structure and another off Calloo, destroying more than eight hundred Spanish soldiers and endangering their intrepid leader himself. The bridge was wrecked, but Farnese repaired it before the people at Antwerp learned of the success of their attempt.