a town of the Low Countries, in Dutch Brabant, and in the marquisate of the same name. It is seated on an eminence, in the middle of a morass, about a mile and a half from the eastern branch of the Scheld, with which it has a communication by a navigable canal. The houses are well built, the market-places and squares handsome and spacious, and the place contains about 4800 inhabitants. The church before the last siege was reckoned a good building. It has a very advantageous situation on the confines of Brabant, Holland, Zealand, and Flanders. It is strong by nature as well as by art, being so secured by the morasses about it, which are formed by the river Zoom, that it was reckoned impregnable. It was, however, taken in 1747 by the French, but it is thought not without the help of treachery. The fortifications are allowed to be the masterpiece of that great engineer Cohorn. It had been twice besieged before without success. When the marquis of Spinola invested it, he was forced to raise the siege with the loss of 10,000 men; and, in 1814, an unsuccessful attempt to take it was made by a British force under Sir Thomas Graham. E. Long. 4. 15. N. Lat. 51. 30.