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+The Project Gutenberg EBook History of The United Netherlands, 1600
+#73 in our series by John Lothrop Motley
+
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+Title: History of the United Netherlands, 1600
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+Author: John Lothrop Motley
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+Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4873]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY UNITED NETHERLANDS, 1600 ***
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+This eBook was produced by David Widger
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+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Vol. 73
+
+History of the United Netherlands, 1600
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER, XXXVIII.
+
+     Military events--Aggressive movement of the Netherlanders--State of
+     the Archdukes provinces--Mutiny of the Spanish forces--Proposed
+     invasion of Flanders by the States-General--Disembarkation of the
+     troops on the Spanish coasts--Capture of Oudenburg and other places
+     --Surprise of Nieuport--Conduct of the Archduke--Oudenburg and the
+     other forts re-taken--Dilemma of the States' army--Attack of the
+     Archduke on Count Ernest's cavalry--Panic and total overthrow of the
+     advance-guard of the States' army--Battle of Nieuport--Details of
+     the action--Defeat of the Spanish army--Results of the whole
+     expedition.
+
+The effect produced in the republic by the defensive and uneventful
+campaigning of the year 1599 had naturally been depressing.  There was
+murmuring at the vast amount of taxation, especially at the new
+imposition of one-half per cent. upon all property, and two-and-a-half
+per cent. on all sales, which seemed to produce so few results.  The
+successful protection of the Isle of Bommel and the judicious purchase of
+the two forts of Crevecoeur and St. Andrew; early in the following year,
+together with their garrisons, were not military events of the first
+magnitude, and were hardly enough to efface the mortification felt at the
+fact that the enemy had been able so lately to construct one of those
+strongholds within the territory of the commonwealth.
+
+It was now secretly determined to attempt an aggressive movement on a
+considerable scale, and to carry the war once for all into the heart of
+the obedient provinces.  It was from Flanders that the Spanish armies
+drew a great portion of their supplies.  It was by the forts erected on
+the coast of Flanders in the neighbourhood of Ostend that this important
+possession of the States was rendered nearly valueless.  It was by
+privateers swarming from the ports of Flanders, especially from Nieuport
+and Dunkirk, that the foreign trade of the republic was crippled, and its
+intercommunications by river and estuary rendered unsafe.  Dunkirk was
+simply a robbers' cave, a station from which an annual tax was levied
+upon the commerce of the Netherlands, almost sufficient, had it been paid
+to the national treasury instead of to the foreign freebooters, to
+support the expenses of a considerable army.
+
+On the other hand the condition of the archdukes seemed deplorable.
+Never had mutiny existed before in so well-organised and definite a form
+even in the Spanish Netherlands.
+
+Besides those branches of the "Italian republic," which had been
+established in the two fortresses of Crevecoeur and St. Andrew, and which
+had already sold themselves to the States, other organisations quite as
+formidable existed in various other portions of the obedient provinces.
+Especially at Diest and Thionville the rebellious Spaniards and Italians
+were numbered by thousands, all veterans, well armed, fortified in strong
+cities; and supplying themselves with perfect regularity by contributions
+levied upon the peasantry, obeying their Eletto and other officers with
+exemplary promptness; and paying no more heed to the edicts or the
+solicitations of the archduke than if he had been the Duke of Muscovy.
+
+The opportunity seemed tempting to strike a great blow.  How could Albert
+and Isabella, with an empty exchequer and a mutinous army, hope either to
+defend their soil from attack or to aim a counter blow at the republic,
+even if, the republic for a season should be deprived of a portion of its
+defenders?
+
+The reasoning was plausible, the prize tempting.  The States-General, who
+habitually discountenanced rashness, and were wont to impose superfluous
+restraints upon the valiant but discreet Lewis William, and upon the
+deeply pondering but energetic Maurice, were now grown as ardent as
+they had hitherto been hesitating.  In the early days of June it was
+determined in secret session to organize a great force in Holland and
+Zeeland, and to embark suddenly for Nieuport, to carry that important
+position by surprise or assault, and from that basis to redeem Dunkirk.
+The possession of these two cities, besides that of Ostend, which had
+always been retained by the Republic, would ensure the complete
+subjugation of Flanders.  The trifling force of two thousand men under
+Rivas--all that the archduke then had in that province--and the sconces
+and earthworks which had been constructed around Ostend to impede the
+movements and obstruct the supplies of the garrison, would be utterly
+powerless to prevent the consummation of the plan.  Flanders once
+subjugated, it would not be long before the Spaniards were swept from the
+obedient Netherlands as thoroughly as they had been from the domains of
+the commonwealth, and all the seventeen provinces, trampling out every
+vestige of a hated foreign tyranny, would soon take their natural place
+as states of a free; prosperous, and powerful union.
+
+But Maurice of Nassau did not share the convictions of the States-
+General.  The unwonted ardour of Barneveld did not inflame his
+imagination.  He urged that the enterprise was inexcusably rash; that its
+execution would require the whole army of the States, except the slender
+garrisons absolutely necessary to protect important places from surprise;
+that a defeat would not be simply disaster, but annihilation; that
+retreat without absolute triumph would be impossible, and that amid such
+circumstances the archduke, in spite of his poverty and the rebellious
+condition of his troops, would doubtless assemble a sufficient force to
+dispute with reasonable prospects of victory, this invasion of his
+territory.
+
+Sir Francis Vere, too, was most decidedly opposed to the plan.  He
+pointed out with great clearness its dangerous and possibly fatal
+character; assuring the Staten that, within a fortnight after the
+expedition had begun, the archduke would follow upon their heels with an
+army fully able to cope with the best which they could put into the
+field.  But besides this experienced and able campaigner, who so
+thoroughly shared the opinions of Prince Maurice, every military man in
+the provinces of any consideration, was opposed to, the scheme.
+Especially Lewis William--than whom no more sagacious military critic or
+accomplished strategist existed in Europe, denounced it with energy and
+even with indignation.  It was, in the opinion of the young stadholder of
+Friesland, to suspend the existence of the whole commonwealth upon a
+silken thread.  Even success, he prophesied, would bring no permanent,
+fruits, while the consequences of an overthrow, were fearful to
+contemplate.  The immediate adherents and most trusted counsellors of
+William Lewis were even more unmeasured in their denunciations than he
+was himself.  "'Tis all the work of Barneveld and the long-gowns," cried
+Everard van Reyd.  "We are led into a sack from which there is no
+extrication.  We are marching to the Caudine Forks."
+
+Certainly it is no small indication of the vast influence and the
+indomitable resolution of Barneveld that he never faltered in this storm
+of indignation.  The Advocate had made up his mind to invade Flanders and
+to capture Nieuport; and the decree accordingly went forth, despite all
+opposition.  The States-General were sovereign, and the Advocate and the
+States-General were one.
+
+It was also entirely characteristic of Maurice that he should submit his
+judgment on this great emergency to that of Olden-Barneveld.  It was
+difficult for him to resist the influence of the great intellect to which
+he had always willingly deferred in affairs of state, and from which;
+even in military matters, it was hardly possible for him to escape.  Yet
+in military matters Maurice was a consummate professor, and the Advocate
+in comparison but a school-boy.
+
+The ascendency of Barneveld was the less wholesome, therefore, and it
+might have been better had the stadholder manifested more resolution.
+But Maurice had not a resolute character.  Thorough soldier as he was, he
+was singularly vacillating, at times almost infirm of purpose, but never
+before in his career had this want of decision manifested itself in so
+striking a manner.
+
+Accordingly the States-General, or in other words John of Olden-Barneveld
+proposed to invade Flanders, and lay siege, to Nieuport.  The States-
+General were sovereign, and Maurice bowed to their authority.  After the
+matter had been entirely decided upon the state-council was consulted,
+and the state-council attempted no opposition to the project. The
+preparations were made with matchless energy and extraordinary secrecy.
+Lewis William, who meanwhile was to defend the eastern frontier of the
+republic against any possible attack, sent all the troops that it was
+possible to spare; but he sent, them with a heavy heart.  His forebodings
+were dismal.  It seemed to him that all was about to be staked upon a
+single cast of the dice.  Moreover it was painful to him while the
+terrible game, was playing to be merely a looker on and a prophet of
+evil from a distance, forbidden to contribute by his personal skill and
+experience to a fortunate result.  Hohenlo too was appointed to protect
+the southern border, and was excluded from, all participation in the
+great expedition.
+
+As to the enemy, such rumors as might came to them from day to day of
+mysterious military, preparations on the part of the rebels only served
+to excite suspicion in others directions.  The archduke was uneasy in,
+regard to the Rhine and the Gueldrian; quarter, but never dreamt of a
+hostile descent upon the Flemish coast.
+
+Meantime, on the 19th June Maurice of Nassau made his appearance at
+Castle Rammekens, not far from Flushing, at the mouth of the Scheld, to
+superintend the great movement.  So large a fleet as was there assembled
+had never before been seen or heard of in Christendom.  Of war-ships,
+transports, and flat-bottomed barges there were at least thirteen
+hundred.  Many eye-witnesses, who counted however with their
+imaginations, declared that there were in all at least three thousand
+vessels, and the statement has been reproduced by grave and trustworthy
+chroniclers.  As the number of troops to be embarked upon the enterprise
+certainly did not exceed fourteen thousand, this would have been an
+allowance of one vessel to every five soldiers, besides the army
+munitions and provisions--a hardly reasonable arrangement.
+
+Twelve thousand infantry and sixteen hundred cavalry, the consummate
+flower of the States' army, all well-paid, well-clad, well-armed, well-
+disciplined veterans, had been collected in this place of rendezvous and
+were ready to embark.  It would be unjust to compare the dimensions of
+this force and the preparations for ensuring the success of the
+enterprise with the vast expeditions and gigantic armaments of later
+times, especially with the tremendous exhibitions of military and naval
+energy with which our own civil war has made us familiar.  Maurice was an
+adept in all that science and art had as yet bequeathed to humanity for
+the purpose of human' destruction, but the number of his troops was small
+compared to the mighty hosts which the world since those days has seen
+embattled.  War, as a trade, was then less easily learned.  It was a
+guild in which apprenticeship was difficult, and in which enrolment was
+usually for life.  A little republic of scarce three million souls, which
+could keep always on foot a regular well-appointed army of twenty-five
+thousand men and a navy of one or two hundred heavily armed cruisers, was
+both a marvel and a formidable element in the general polity of the
+world.  The lesson to be derived both in military and political
+philosophy from the famous campaign of Nieuport does not depend for its
+value on the numbers of the ships or soldiers engaged in the undertaking.
+Otherwise, and had it been merely a military expedition like a thousand
+others which have been made and forgotten, it would not now deserve more
+than a momentary attention.  But the circumstances were such as to make
+the issue of the impending battle one of the most important in human
+history.  It was entirely possible that an overwhelming defeat of the
+republican forces on this foreign expedition would bring with it an
+absolute destruction of the republic, and place Spain once more in
+possession of the heretic "islands," from which basis she would menace
+the very existence of England more seriously than she had ever done
+before.  Who could measure the consequences to Christendom of such a
+catastrophe?
+
+The distance from the place where the fleet and army were assembled to
+Nieuport--the objective point of the enterprise--was but thirty-five
+miles as the crow flies.  And the crow can scarcely fly in a straighter
+line than that described by the coast along which the ships were to shape
+their course.
+
+And here it is again impossible not to reflect upon the change which
+physical science has brought over the conduct of human affairs.  We have
+seen in a former chapter a most important embassy sent forth from the
+States for the purpose of preventing the consummation of a peace between
+their ally and their enemy.  Celerity was a vital element in the success
+of such a mission; for the secret negotiations which it was intended to
+impede were supposed to be near their termination.  Yet months were
+consumed in a journey which in our day would have been accomplished in
+twenty-four hours.  And now in this great military expedition the
+essential and immediate purpose was to surprise a small town almost
+within sight from the station at which the army was ready to embark.
+Such a midsummer voyage in this epoch of steam-tugs and transports would
+require but a few hours.  Yet two days long the fleet lay at anchor while
+a gentle breeze blew persistently from the south-west.  As there seemed
+but little hope that the wind would become more favourable, and as the
+possibility of surprise grew fainter with every day's delay, it was
+decided to make a landing upon the nearest point of Flemish coast placed
+by circumstances within their reach: Count Ernest of Nassau; with the
+advance-guard, was accordingly, despatched on the 21st June to the
+neighbourhood of the Sas-of Ghent, where he seized a weakly guarded fort,
+called Philippine, and made thorough preparations, for the arrival of the
+whole army.  On the following day the rest of the troops made their
+appearance, and in the course of five hours were safely disembarked.
+
+The army, which consisted of Zeelanders, Frisians, Hollanders, Walloons,
+Germans, English, and Scotch, was divided into three corps.  The advance
+was under the command of Count Ernest, the battalia under that of Count
+George Everard Solms, while the rear-guard during the march was entrusted
+to that experienced soldier Sir Francis Vere.  Besides Prince Maurice,
+there were three other members of the house of Nassau serving in the
+expedition--his half-brother Frederic Henry, then a lad of sixteen, and
+the two brothers of the Frisian stadholder, Ernest and Lewis Gunther,
+whom Lewis William had been so faithfully educating in the arts of peace
+and war both by precept and example.  Lewis Gunther, still a mere youth,
+but who had been the first to scale the fort of Cadiz, and to plant on
+its height the orange banner of the murdered rebel, and whose gallantry
+during the whole expedition had called forth the special commendations of
+Queen Elizabeth--expressed in energetic and affectionate terms to his
+father--now commanded all the cavalry.  Certainly if the doctrine of
+primordial selection could ever be accepted among human creatures, the
+race of Nassau at that day might have seemed destined to be chiefs of the
+Netherland soil.  Old John of Nassau, ardent and energetic as ever in the
+cause of the religious reformation of Germany and the liberation of
+Holland, still watched from his retirement the progress of the momentous
+event.  Four of his brethren, including the great founder of the
+republic, had already laid down their lives for the sacred cause.  His
+son Philip had already fallen under the banner in the fight of Bislich,
+and three other sons were serving the republic day and night, by sea and
+land, with sword, and pen, and purse, energetically, conscientiously, and
+honourably.  Of the stout hearts and quick intellects on which the safety
+of the commonwealth then depended, none was more efficient or true than
+the accomplished soldier and statesman Lewis William.  Thoroughly
+disapproving of the present invasion of Flanders, he was exerting
+himself, now that it had been decided upon by his sovereigns the States-
+Generals, with the same loyalty as that of Maurice, to bring it to a
+favourable issue, although not personally engaged in the adventure.
+
+So soon as the troops had been landed the vessels were sent off as
+expeditiously as possible, that none might fall into, the enemy's hands;
+the transports under a strong convoy of war-ships having been directed to
+proceed as fast as the wind would permit in the direction of Nieuport.
+The march then began.  On the 23rd they advanced a league and halted for
+the night at Assenede.  The next day brought them three leagues further,
+to a place called Eckerloo.  On the 25th they marched to Male, a distance
+of three leagues and a half, passing close to the walls of Bruges, in
+which they had indulged faint hopes of exciting an insurrection, but
+obtained nothing but a feeble cannonade from the fortifications which did
+no damage except the killing of one muleteer.  The next night was passed
+at Jabbeke, four leagues from Male, and on the 27th, after marching
+another league, they came before the fort of Oudenburg.
+
+This important post on the road which the army would necessarily traverse
+in coming from the interior to the coast was easily captured and then
+strongly garrisoned.  Maurice with the main army spent the two following
+days at the fortress, completing his arrangements.  Solms was sent
+forward to seize the sconces and redoubts of the enemy around Ostend, at
+Breedene, Snaaskerk, Plassendaal, and other points, and especially to
+occupy the important fort called St. Albert, which was in the downs at
+about a league from that city.  All this work was thoroughly
+accomplished; little or no resistance having been made to the occupation
+of these various places.  Meantime the States-General, who at the special
+request of Maurice were to accompany the expedition in order to observe
+the progress of events for which they were entirely responsible, and to
+aid the army when necessary by their advice and co-operation, had
+assembled to the number of thirteen in Ostend.  Solms having strengthened
+the garrison of that place then took up his march along the beach to
+Nieuport.  During the progress of the army through Holland and Zeeland
+towards its place of embarkation there had been nothing but dismal
+prognostics, with expressions of muttered indignation, wherever the
+soldiers passed.  It seemed to the country people, and to the inhabitants
+of every town and village, that their defenders were going to certain
+destruction; that the existence of the commonwealth was hanging by a
+thread soon to be snapped asunder.  As the forces subsequently marched
+from the Sas of Ghent towards the Flemish coast there was no rising of
+the people in their favour, and although Maurice had issued distinct
+orders that the peasantry were to be dealt with gently and justly, yet
+they found neither peasants nor villagers to deal with at all.  The whole
+population on their line of march had betaken themselves to the woods,
+except the village sexton of Jabbeke and his wife, who were too old to
+run.  Lurking in the thickets and marshes, the peasants fell upon all
+stragglers from the army and murdered them without mercy--so difficult
+is it in times of civil war to make human brains pervious to the light of
+reason.  The stadholder and his soldiers came to liberate their brethren
+of the same race, and speaking the same language, from abject submission
+to a foreign despotism.  The Flemings had but to speak a word, to lift a
+finger, and all the Netherlands, self-governed, would coalesce into one
+independent confederation of States, strong enough to defy all the
+despots of Europe.  Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged
+their chains, and preferred the tyranny under which their kindred had
+been tortured, burned, and buried alive for half-a-century long, to the
+possibility of a single Calvinistic conventicle being opened in any
+village of obedient Flanders.  So these excellent children of Philip and
+the pope, whose language was as unintelligible to them as it was to
+Peruvians or Iroquois, lay in wait for the men who spoke their own mother
+tongue, and whose veins were filled with their own blood, and murdered
+them, as a sacred act of duty.  Retaliation followed as a matter of
+course, so that the invasion of Flanders, in this early stage of its
+progress, seemed not likely to call forth very fraternal feelings
+between the two families of Netherlanders.
+
+The army was in the main admirably well supplied, but there was a
+deficiency of drink.  The water as they advanced became brackish and
+intolerably bad, and there was great difficulty in procuring any
+substitute.  At Male three cows were given for a pot of beer, and more of
+that refreshment might have been sold at the same price, had there been
+any sellers.
+
+On the 30th June Maurice marched from Oudenburg, intending to strike a
+point called Niewendam--a fort in the neighbourhood of Nieuport--and so
+to march along the walls of that city and take up his position
+immediately in its front.  He found the ground, however, so marshy and
+impracticable as he advanced, that he was obliged to countermarch, and to
+spend that night on the downs between forts Isabella and St. Albert.
+
+On the 1st July he resumed his march, and passing a bridge over a small
+stream at a place called Leffingen, laying down a road as he went with
+sods and sand, and throwing bridges over streams and swamps, he arrived
+in the forenoon before Nieuport.  The, fleet had reached the roadstead
+the same morning.
+
+This was a strong, well-built, and well-fortified little city, situate
+half-a-league from the sea coast on low, plashy ground.  At high water it
+was a seaport, for a stream or creek of very insignificant dimensions was
+then sufficiently filled by the tide to admit vessels of considerable
+burthen.  This haven was immediately taken possession of by the
+stadholder, and two-thirds of his army were thrown across to the western
+side of the water, the troops remaining on the Ostend side being by a
+change of arrangement now under command of Count Ernest.
+
+Thus the army which had come to surprise Nieuport had, after
+accomplishing a distance of nearly forty miles in thirteen days,
+at last arrived before that place.  Yet there was no more expeditious
+or energetic commander in Christendom than Maurice, nor troops better
+trained in marching and fighting than his well-disciplined army.
+
+It is now necessary to cast a glance towards the interior of Flanders,
+in order to observe how the archduke conducted himself in this emergency.
+So soon as the news of the landing of the States' army at the port of
+Ghent reached the sovereign's ears, he awoke from the delusion that
+danger was impending on his eastern border, and lost no time in
+assembling such troops as could be mustered from far and near to protect
+the western frontier.  Especially he despatched messengers well charged
+with promises, to confer with the authorities of the "Italian Republic"
+at Diest and Thionville.  He appealed to them in behalf of the holy
+Catholic religion, he sought to arouse their loyalty to himself and the
+Infanta Isabella--daughter of the great and good Philip II., once
+foremost of earthly potentates, and now eminent among the saints of
+heaven--by whose fiat he and his wife had now become legitimate
+sovereigns of all the Netherlands.  And those mutineers responded with
+unexpected docility.  Eight hundred foot soldiers and six hundred cavalry
+men came forth at the first summons, making but two conditions in
+addition to the stipulated payment when payment should be possible--that
+they should be commanded by their own chosen officers, and that they
+should be placed in the first rank in the impending conflict.  The
+example spread.  Other detachments of mutineers in various strongholds,
+scenting the battle from afar, came in with offers to serve in the
+campaign on similar terms.  Before the last week of June the archduke had
+a considerable army on foot.  On the 29th of that month, accompanied by
+the Infanta, he reviewed a force of ten thousand foot and nearly two
+thousand cavalry in the immediate vicinity of Ghent.  He addressed them
+in a few stirring words, reminding them of their duty to the Church and
+to himself, and assuring them--as commanders of every nation and every
+age are wont to assure their troops at the eve of every engagement--that
+the cause in which they were going forth to battle was the most sacred
+and inspiring for which human creatures could possibly lay down their
+lives.  Isabella, magnificently attired, and mounted on a white palfrey,
+galloped along the lines, and likewise made an harangue.  She spoke to
+the soldiers as "her lions," promised them boundless rewards in this
+world and the next, as the result of the great victory which they were
+now about to gain over the infidels; while as to their wages, she vowed
+that, rather than they should remain unpaid, she would sacrifice all her
+personal effects, even to the plate from which she ate her daily bread,
+and to the jewels which she wore in her ears.
+
+Thousands of hoarse voices greeted the eloquence of the archdukes with
+rude acclamations, while the discharge of arquebus and volleys of cannon
+testified to the martial ardour with which the troops were inspired; none
+being more enthusiastic than the late mutineers.  The army marched at
+once, under many experienced leaders--Villars, Zapena, and Avalos among
+the most conspicuous.  The command of the artillery was entrusted to
+Velasco; the marshal-general of the camp was Frederic van den Berg, in
+place of the superannuated Peter Ernest; while the Admiral of Arragon,
+Francisco de Mendoza, "terror of Germany and of Christendom," a little
+man with flowing locks, long hooked nose, and a sinister glance from his
+evil black eyes, was general of the cavalry.  The admiral had not
+displayed very extraordinary genius in his recent campaigning in the
+Rhenish duchies, but his cruelty had certainly been conspicuous.  Not
+even Alva could have accomplished more murders and other outrages in the
+same space of time than had been perpetrated by the Spanish troops during
+the infamous winter of 1598-9.  The assassination of Count Broeck at his
+own castle had made more stir than a thousand other homicides of nameless
+wretches at the same period had done, because the victim had been a man
+of rank and large possessions, but it now remained to be seen whether
+Mendoza was to gain fresh laurels of any kind in the battle which was
+probably impending.
+
+On the 1st of July the archduke came before Oudenburg.  Not a soul within
+that fortress nor in Ostend dreamed of an enemy within twenty miles of
+them, nor had it been supposed possible that a Spanish army could take
+the field for many weeks to come.  The States-General at Ostend were
+complacently waiting for the first bulletin from Maurice announcing his
+capture of Nieuport and his advance upon Dunkirk, according to the
+program so succinctly drawn up for him, and meantime were holding
+meetings and drawing up comfortable protocols with great regularity.
+Colonel Piron, on his part, who had been left with several companies of
+veterans to hold Oudenburg and the other forts, and to protect the rear
+of the invading army, was accomplishing that object by permitting a large
+portion of his force to be absent on foraging parties and general
+marauding.  When the enemy came before Oudenburg they met with no
+resistance.  The fort was surrendered at once, and with it fell the
+lesser sconces of Breedene, Snaaskerk, and Plassendaal--all but the more
+considerable fort St. Albert.  The archduke, not thinking it advisable to
+delay his march by the reduction of this position, and having possession
+of all the other fortifications around Ostend, determined to push forward
+next morning at daybreak.  He had granted favourable terms of surrender
+to the various garrisons, which, however, did not prevent them from being
+dearly--every man of them immediately butchered in cold blood.
+
+Thus were these strong and well-manned redoubts, by which Prince Maurice
+had hoped to impede for many days the march of a Spanish army--should a
+Spanish army indeed be able to take the field at all--already swept off
+in an hour.  Great was the dismay in Ostend when Colonel Piron and a few
+stragglers brought the heavy news of discomfiture and massacre to the
+high and mighty States-General in solemn meeting assembled.
+
+Meanwhile, the States' army before Nieuport, not dreaming of any pending
+interruption to their labours, proceeded in a steady but leisurely manner
+to invest the city.  Maurice occupied himself in tracing the lines of
+encampment and entrenchment, and ordered a permanent bridge to be begun
+across the narrowest part of the creek, in order that the two parts of
+his army might not be so dangerously divided from each other as they now
+were, at high water, by the whole breadth and depth of the harbour.
+Evening came on before much had been accomplished on this first day of
+the siege.  It was scarcely dusk when a messenger, much exhausted and
+terrified, made his appearance at Count Ernest's tent. He was a straggler
+who had made his escape from Oudenburg, and he brought the astounding
+intelligence that the archduke had already possession of that position
+and of all the other forts.  Ernest instantly jumped into a boat and had
+himself rowed, together with the messenger, to the headquarters of Prince
+Maurice on the other side of the river.  The news was as unexpected as it
+was alarming.  Here was the enemy, who was supposed incapable of mischief
+for weeks to come, already in the field, and planted directly on their
+communications with Ostend.  Retreat, if retreat were desired, was
+already impossible, and as to surprising the garrison of Nieuport and so
+obtaining that stronghold as a basis for further aggressive operations,
+it is very certain that if any man in Flanders was more surprised than
+another at that moment it was Prince Maurice himself.  He was too good a
+soldier not to see at a glance that if the news brought by the straggler
+were true, the whole expedition was already a failure, and that, instead
+of a short siege and an easy victory, a great battle was to be fought
+upon the sands of Nieuport, in which defeat was destruction of the whole
+army of the republic, and very possibly of the republic itself.
+
+The stadholder hesitated.  He was prone in great emergencies to hesitate
+at first, but immovable when his resolution was taken.  Vere, who was
+asleep in his tent, was sent for and consulted.  Most of the generals
+were inclined to believe that the demonstrations at Oudenburg, which had
+been so successful, were merely a bravado of Rivas, the commander of the
+permanent troops in that district, which were comparatively insignificant
+in numbers.  Vere thought otherwise.  He maintained that the archduke was
+already in force within a few hours' march of them, as he had always
+supposed would be the case.  His opinion was not shared by the rest,
+and he went back to his truckle-bed, feeling that a brief repose was
+necessary for the heavy work which would soon be upon him.  At midnight
+the Englishman was again called from his slumbers.  Another messenger,
+sent directly from the States-General at Ostend, had made his way to the
+stadholder.  This time there was no possibility of error, for Colonel
+Piron had sent the accord with the garrison commanders of the forts which
+had been so shamefully violated, and which bore the signature of the
+archduke.
+
+It was now perfectly obvious that a pitched battle was to be fought
+before another sunset, and most anxious were the deliberations in that
+brief midsummer's night.  The dilemma was as grave a one as commander-in-
+chief had ever to solve in a few hours.  A portentous change had come
+over the prospects of the commonwealth since the arrival of these
+despatches.  But a few hours before, and never had its destiny seemed so
+secure, its attitude more imposing.  The little republic, which Spain had
+been endeavouring forty years long to subjugate, had already swept every
+Spanish soldier out of its territory, had repeatedly carried fire and
+sword into Spain itself, and even into its distant dependencies, and at
+that moment--after effecting in a masterly manner the landing of a great
+army in the very face of the man who claimed to be sovereign of all the
+Netherlands, and after marching at ease through the heart of his
+territory--was preparing a movement, with every prospect of success,
+which should render the hold of that sovereign on any portion of
+Netherland soil as uncertain and shifting as the sands on which the
+States army was now encamped.
+
+The son of the proscribed and murdered rebel stood at the head of as
+powerful and well-disciplined an army as had ever been drawn up in line
+of battle on that blood-stained soil.  The daughter of the man who had so
+long oppressed the provinces might soon be a fugitive from the land over
+which she had so recently been endowed with perpetual sovereignty.  And
+now in an instant these visions were fading like a mirage.
+
+The archduke, whom poverty and mutiny were to render powerless against
+invasion, was following close up upon the heels of the triumphant army of
+the stadholder.  A decision was immediately necessary.  The siege of
+Nieuport was over before it had begun.  Surprise had failed, assault for
+the moment was impossible, the manner how best to confront the advancing
+foe the only question.
+
+Vere advised that the whole army should at once be concentrated and led
+without delay against the archduke before he should make further
+progress.  The advice involved an outrageous impossibility, and it
+seems incredible that it could have been given in good faith; still more
+amazing that its rejection by Maurice should have been bitterly censured.
+Two-thirds of the army lay on the other side of the harbour, and it was
+high water at about three o'clock.  While they were deliberating, the sea
+was rising, and, so soon as daybreak should make any evolutions possible,
+they would be utterly prohibited during several hours by the inexorable
+tide.  More time would be consumed by the attempt to construct temporary
+bridges (for of course little progress had been made in the stone bridge
+hardly begun) or to make use of boats than in waiting for the falling of
+the water, and, should the enemy make his appearance while they were
+engaged in such confusing efforts, the army would be hopelessly lost.
+
+Maurice, against the express advice of Vere, decided to send his cousin
+Ernest, with the main portion of the force established on the right bank
+of the harbour, in search of the archduke, for the purpose of holding him
+in check long enough to enable the rest of the army to cross the water
+when the tide should serve.  The enemy, it was now clear, would advance
+by precisely the path over which the States' army had marched that
+morning.  Ernest was accordingly instructed to move with the greatest
+expedition in order to seize the bridge at Leffingen before the archduke
+should reach the deep, dangerous, and marshy river, over which it was the
+sole passage to the downs.  Two thousand infantry, being the Scotch
+regiment of Edmonds and the Zeelanders of Van der Noot, four squadrons of
+Dutch cavalry, and two pieces of artillery composed the force with which
+Ernest set forth at a little before dawn on his hazardous but heroic
+enterprise.
+
+With a handful of troops he was to make head against an army, and the
+youth accepted the task in the cheerful spirit of self-sacrifice which
+characterized his house.  Marching as rapidly as the difficult ground
+would permit, he had the disappointment, on approaching the fatal point
+at about eight o'clock, to see the bridge at Leffingen in the possession
+of the enemy.  Maurice had sent off a messenger early that morning with
+a letter marked post haste (cito, cito) to Ostend ordering up some four
+hundred cavalry-men then stationed in that city under Piron and Bruges,
+to move up to the support of Ernest, and to destroy the bridge and dams
+at Leffingen before the enemy should arrive.  That letter, which might
+have been so effective, was delivered, as it subsequently appeared,
+exactly ten days after it was written.  The States, of their own
+authority, had endeavoured to send out those riders towards the scene of
+action, but it was with great difficulty that they could be got into the
+saddle at all, and they positively refused to go further than St. Albert
+fort.
+
+What course should he now pursue?  He had been sent to cut the archduke's
+road.  He had failed.  Had he remained in his original encampment his
+force would have been annihilated by the overwhelming numbers of the
+enemy so soon as they reached the right bank of Nieuport haven, while
+Maurice could have only looked hopelessly on from the opposite shore.
+At least nothing worse than absolute destruction could befal him now.
+Should he accept a combat of six or eight to one the struggle would be
+hopeless, but the longer it was protracted the better it would be for his
+main army, engaged at that very moment as he knew in crossing the haven
+with the ebbing tide.  Should he retreat, it might be possible for him to
+escape into Fort Albert or even Ostend, but to do so would be to purchase
+his own safety and that of his command at the probable sacrifice of the
+chief army of the republic.  Ernest hesitated but an instant.  Coming
+within carbine-shot of the stream, where he met his cavalry which had
+been sent forward at full speed, in the vain hope of seizing or
+destroying the bridge before it should be too late, he took up a position
+behind a dyke, upon which he placed his two field-pieces, and formed his
+troops in line of battle exactly across the enemy's path.  On the right
+he placed the regiment of Scots.  On the left was Van der Noot's Zeeland
+infantry, garnished with four companies of riders under Risoir, which
+stood near St. Mary's church.  The passage from the stream to the downs
+was not more than a hundred yards wide, being skirted on both sides by a
+swamp.  Here Ernest with his two thousand men awaited the onset of the
+archduke's army.  He was perfectly aware that it was a mere question of
+time, but he was sure that his preparations must interpose a delay to the
+advance of the Spaniards, should his troops, as he felt confident, behave
+themselves as they had always done, and that the delay would be of
+inestimable value to his friends at the haven of Nieuport.
+
+The archduke paused; for he, too, could not be certain, on observing the
+resolute front thus presented to him, that he was not about to engage the
+whole of the States' army.  The doubt was but of short duration, however,
+and the onset was made.  Ernest's artillery fired four volleys into the
+advancing battalions with such effect as to stagger them for a moment,
+but they soon afterwards poured over the dyke in over whelming numbers,
+easily capturing the cannon.  The attack began upon Ernest's left, and
+Risoir's cavalry, thinking that they should be cut off from all
+possibility of retreat into Fort St. Albert, turned their backs in the
+most disgraceful manner, without even waiting for the assault.  Galloping
+around the infantry on the left they infected the Zeelanders with their
+own cowardice.  Scarcely a moment passed before Van der Noot's whole
+regiment was running away as fast as the troopers, while the Scots on the
+right hesitated not for an instant to follow their example.  Even before
+the expected battle had begun, one of those hideous and unaccountable
+panics which sometimes break out like a moral pestilence to destroy all
+the virtue of an army, and to sweep away the best-considered schemes of
+a general, had spread through Ernest's entire force.  So soon as the
+demi-cannon had discharged their fourth volley, Scots, Zeelanders,
+Walloons, pikemen, musketeers, and troopers, possessed by the demon of
+cowardice, were running like a herd of swine to throw themselves into the
+sea.  Had they even kept the line of the downs in the direction of the
+fort many of them might have saved their lives, although none could have
+escaped disgrace.  But the Scots, in an ecstasy of fear, throwing away
+their arms as they fled, ran through the waters behind the dyke, skimmed
+over the sands at full speed, and never paused till such as survived the
+sabre and musket of their swift pursuers had literally drowned themselves
+in the ocean.  Almost every man of them was slain or drowned.  All the
+captains--Stuart, Barclay, Murray, Kilpatrick, Michael, Nesbit--with the
+rest of the company officers, doing their best to rally the fugitives,
+were killed.  The Zeelanders, more cautious in the midst of their panic,
+or perhaps knowing better the nature of the country, were more successful
+in saving their necks.  Not more than a hundred and fifty of Van der
+Noot's regiment were killed, while such of the cavalry of Bruges and
+Piron as had come to the neighbourhood of Fort Albert, not caring to
+trust themselves to the shelter of that redoubt, now fled as fast as
+their horses' legs would carry them, and never pulled bridle till they
+found themselves in Ostend.  And so beside themselves with panic were
+these fugitives, and so virulent was the contagion, that it was difficult
+to prevent the men who had remained in the fort from joining in the
+flight towards Ostend.  Many of them indeed threw themselves over the
+walls and were sabred by the enemy when they might have been safe within
+the fortifications.  Had these cavalry companies of Bruges and Piron been
+even tolerably self-possessed, had they concentrated themselves in the
+fort instead of yielding to the delirium which prompted them to
+participate in their comrades' flight, they would have had it entirely in
+their power, by making an attack, or even the semblance of an attack, by
+means of a sudden sally from the fort, to have saved, not the battle
+indeed, but a large number of lives.  But the panic was hopeless and
+universal, and countless fugitives scrambling by the fort were shot in
+a leisurely manner by a comparative few of the enemy as easily as the
+rabbits which swarmed in those sands were often knocked down in
+multitudes by half-a-dozen sportsmen.
+
+And thus a band of patriots, who were not cowards by nature, and who had
+often played the part of men, had horribly disgraced themselves, and were
+endangering the very existence of their country, already by mistaken
+councils brought within the jaws of death.  The glory of Thermopyla;
+might have hung for ever over that bridge of Leffingen.  It was now a
+pass of infamy, perhaps of fatal disaster.  The sands were covered with
+weapons-sabre, pike, and arquebus--thrown away by almost every soldier as
+he fled to save the life which after all was sacrificed.  The artillery,
+all the standards and colours, all the baggage and ammunition, every
+thing was lost.  No viler panic, no more complete defeat was ever
+recorded.  Such at half-past eight in the morning was that memorable
+Sunday of the 2nd July, 1600, big with the fate of the Dutch republic
+--the festival of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, always thought of
+happy augury for Spanish arms.
+
+Thus began the long expected battle of Nieuport.  At least a thousand of
+the choicest troops of the stadholder were slain, while the Spanish had
+hardly lost a man.
+
+The archduke had annihilated his enemy, had taken his artillery and
+thirty flags.  In great exultation he despatched a messenger to the
+Infanta at Ghent, informing her that he had entirely defeated the
+advance-guard of the States' army, and that his next bulletin would
+announce his complete triumph and the utter overthrow of Maurice, who had
+now no means of escape.  He stated also that he would very soon send the
+rebel stadholder himself to her as a prisoner.  The Infanta, much pleased
+with the promise, observed to her attendants that she was curious to see
+how Nassau would conduct himself when he should be brought a captive into
+her presence.  As to the Catholic troops, they were informed by the
+archduke that after the complete victory which they were that day to
+achieve, not a man should be left alive save Maurice and his brother
+Frederic Henry.  These should be spared to grace the conqueror's triumph,
+but all else should be put to the sword.
+
+Meantime artillery thundered, bonfires blazed, and bells rang their
+merriest peals in Ghent, Bruges, and the other obedient cities as the
+news of the great victory spread through the land.
+
+When the fight was done the archduke called a council of war.  It was a
+grave question whether the army should at once advance in order to
+complete the destruction of the enemy that day, or pause for an interval
+that the troops fatigued with hard marching and with the victorious
+combat in which they just had been engaged, should recover their full
+strength.  That the stadholder was completely in their power was certain.
+The road to Ostend was barred, and Nieuport would hold him at bay, now
+that the relieving army was close upon his heels.  All that was necessary
+in order to annihilate his whole force, was that they should entrench
+themselves for the night on the road which he must cross.  He would then
+be obliged to assault their works with troops inferior in number to
+theirs and fatigued by the march.  Should he remain where he was he would
+soon be starved into submission, and would be obliged to surrender his
+whole army.  On the other hand, by advancing now, in the intolerable heat
+of a July sun over the burning and glaring sands, the troops already
+wearied would arrive on the field of battle utterly exhausted, and would
+be obliged to attack an enemy freshly and cheerfully awaiting them on
+ground of his own selection.
+
+Moreover it was absolutely certain that Fort Albert would not hold an
+hour if resolutely assaulted in the midst of the panic of Ernest's
+defeat, and, with its capture, the annihilalation of Maurice was certain.
+
+Meantime the three thousand men under Velasco, who had been detached to
+protect the rear, would arrive to reinforce the archduke's main army,
+should he pause until the next day.
+
+These arguments, which had much logic in them, were strongly urged by
+Zapena, a veteran marshal of the camp who had seen much service, and
+whose counsels were usually received with deference.  But on this
+occasion commanders and soldiers were hot for following up their victory.
+They cared nothing for the numbers of their enemy, they cried, "The more
+infidels the greater glory in destroying them."  Delay might after all
+cause the loss of the prize, it was eagerly shouted.  The archduke ought
+to pray that the sun might stand still for him that morning, as for
+Joshua in the vale of Ajalon.  The foe seeing himself entrapped, with
+destruction awaiting him, was now skulking towards his ships, which still
+offered him the means of escape.  Should they give him time he would
+profit by their negligence, and next morning when they reached Nieuport,
+the birds would be flown.  Especially the leaders of the mutineers of
+Diest and Thionville were hoarse with indignation at the proposed delay.
+They had not left their brethren, they shouted, nor rallied to the
+archduke's banner in order to sit down and dig in the sand like
+ploughmen.  There was triumph for the Holy Church, there was the utter
+overthrow of the heretic army, there was rich booty to be gathered, all
+these things were within their reach if they now advanced and smote the
+rebels while, confused and panic-stricken, they were endeavouring to
+embark in their ships.
+
+While these vehement debates were at the hottest, sails were descried in
+the offing; for the archduke's forces already stood upon the edge of the
+downs.  First one ship, then another and another, moved steadily along
+the coast, returning from Nieuport in the direction of Ostend.
+
+This was more than could be borne.  It was obvious that the rebels were
+already making their escape, and it was urged upon the cardinal that
+probably Prince Maurice and the other chieftains were on board one of
+those very vessels, and were giving him the slip.  With great expedition
+it would still be possible to overtake them before the main body could
+embark, and the attack might yet be made at the most favourable moment.
+Those white sails gleaming in the distance were more eloquent than Zapena
+or any other advocate of delay, and the order was given to advance.  And
+it was exactly at this period that it still lay within the power of the
+States' cavalry at Ostend to partially redeem their character, and to
+render very effective service.  Had four or five hundred resolute
+troopers hung upon the rear of the Spanish army now, as it moved toward
+Nieuport, they might, by judiciously skirmishing, advancing and
+retreating according to circumstances, have caused much confusion, and
+certainly have so harassed the archduke as to compel the detachment of a
+very considerable force of his own cavalry to protect himself against
+such assaults.  But the terror was an enduring one.  Those horsemen
+remained paralyzed and helpless, and it was impossible for the States,
+with all their commands or entreaties, to induce them to mount and ride
+even a half mile beyond the city gates.
+
+While these events had been occurring in the neighbourhood of Ostend,
+Maurice had not been idle at Nieuport.  No sooner had Ernest been
+despatched on his desperate errand than his brother Lewis Gunther was
+ordered by the stadholder to get on horseback and ride through the
+quarters of the army.  On the previous afternoon there had been so little
+thought of an enemy that large foraging parties had gone out from camp in
+all directions, and had not returned.  Lewis gave notice that a great
+battle was to be expected on the morrow, instead of the tranquil
+commencement of a leisurely siege, and that therefore no soul was
+henceforth to leave the camp, while a troop of horse was despatched at
+the first gleam of daylight to scour the country in search of all the
+stragglers.  Maurice had no thought of retreating, and his first care was
+to bring his army across the haven.  The arrangements were soon
+completed, but it was necessary to wait until nearly low water.  Soon
+after eight o'clock Count Lewis began to cross with eight squadrons of
+cavalry, and partly swimming, partly wading, effected the passage in
+safety.  The advanced guard of infantry, under Sir Francis Vere--
+consisting of two thousand six hundred Englishmen, and two thousand eight
+hundred Frisians, with some companies of horse, followed by the battalia
+under Solms, and the rearguard under Tempel--then slowly and with
+difficulty moved along the same dangerous path with the water as high as
+their armpits, and often rising nearly over their heads.  Had the
+archduke not been detained near the bridge of Leffingen by Ernest's
+Scotchmen and Zeelanders during three or four precious hours that
+morning; had he arrived, as he otherwise might have done, just as the
+States' army--horse, foot, and artillery--was floundering through that
+treacherous tide, it would have fared ill for the stadholder and the
+republic.  But the devotion of Ernest had at least prevented the attack
+of the archduke until Maurice and his men stood on dry land.
+
+Dripping from head to foot, but safe and sound, the army had at last
+reached the beach at Nieuport.  Vere had refused his soldiers permission
+to denude themselves in crossing of their shoes and lower garments.
+There was no time for that, he said, and they would either earn new
+clothes for themselves that day, or never need doublet and hose again
+any more in the world.  Some hours had elapsed before the tedious and
+difficult crossing of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and munition trains
+had been accomplished.
+
+Lewis Gunther, with eight squadrons of picked cavalry, including his own
+company, Maurice's own, Frederic Henry's own, with Batenburg's arquebus-
+men, and other veterans, was first to place himself in battle order on
+the beach.  His squadrons in iron corslet and morion, and armed with
+lances, carbines, and sabres, stretched across from the water to the
+downs.  He had not been long stationed there when he observed that far
+away in the direction of Ostend the beach was growing black with troops.
+He believed them at first to be his brother Ernest and his forces
+returning victorious from their hazardous expedition, but he was soon
+undeceived.
+
+A couple of troopers from Ostend came spurring full gallop along the
+strand, and almost breathless with dismay, announced that it was the
+whole army of the archduke advancing in line of battle.  They were
+instantly sent to the rear, without being allowed to speak further, in
+order that they might deliver their message in private to the commander-
+in-chief.  And most terrible were the tidings to which Maurice now
+listened in very secret audience.  Ernest was utterly defeated, his
+command cut to pieces, the triumphant foe advancing rapidly, and already
+in full sight.  The stadholder heard the tale without flinching, and
+having quietly ordered the messengers upon their lives not to open their
+lips on the subject to living soul, sent them securely guarded in a boat
+on board one of the war-ships in the offing.  With perfect cheerfulness
+he then continued his preparations, consulting with Vere, on whom he
+mainly relied for the marshalling of the army in the coming conflict.
+Undecided as he had sometimes shown himself, he was resolute now.  He
+called no council of war, for he knew not how much might be known or
+suspected of the disaster already sustained, and he had fully made up
+his mind as to the course to be pursued.  He had indeed taken a supreme
+resolution.  Entirely out of his own breast, without advising with any
+man, he calmly gave directions that every war-ship, transport, barge, or
+wherry should put to sea at once.  As the tide had now been long on the
+flood, the few vessels that had been aground--within the harbour were got
+afloat, and the whole vast, almost innumerable armada, was soon standing
+out to sea.  No more heroic decision was ever taken by fighting man.
+
+Sir Francis gave advice that entrenchments should be thrown up on the
+north-east, and that instead of advancing towards the enemy they should
+await his coming, and refuse the battle that day if possible.  The
+Englishman, not aware of the catastrophe at Leffingen, which Maurice had
+locked up in his own breast, was now informed by the stadholder that
+there were to be no entrenchments that day but those of pike and
+arquebus.  It was not the fault of Maurice that the fate of the
+commonwealth had been suspended on a silken thread that morning, but he
+knew that but one of two issues was possible.  They must fight their way
+through the enemy back to Ostend, or perish, every man of them.  The
+possibility of surrender did not enter his mind, and he felt that it was
+better to hasten the action before the news of Ernest's disaster should
+arrive to chill the ardour of the troops.
+
+Meantime Lewis Gunther and his cavalry had been sitting motionless upon
+their horses on the beach.  The enemy was already in full view, and the
+young general, most desirous to engage in a preliminary skirmish, sent
+repeated messages to the stadholder for permission to advance.  Presently
+Sir Francis Vere rode to the front, to whom he eagerly urged his request
+that the infantry of the vanguard might be, brought up at once to support
+him.  On the contrary the English general advised that the cavalry should
+fall back to the infantry, in order to avoid a premature movement.  Lewis
+strongly objected to this arrangement, on the ground that the mere
+semblance of retreat, thus upon the eve of battle, would discourage all
+the troops.  But he was over-ruled, for Maurice had expressly enjoined
+upon his cousin that morning to defer in all things to the orders of
+Vere.  These eight squadrons of horse accordingly shifted their position,
+and were now placed close to the edge of the sea, on the left flank of
+the vanguard, which Vere had drawn up across the beach and in the downs.
+On the edge of the downs, on the narrow slip of hard sand above high-
+water mark, and on Vere's right, Maurice had placed a battery of six
+demi-cannon.
+
+Behind the advance was the battalia, or centre, under command of that
+famous fighter, George Everard Solms, consisting of Germans, Swiss,
+French, and Walloons.  The "New Beggars," as the Walloons were called,
+who had so recently surrendered the forts of Crevecoeur and St. Andrew,
+and gone over from the archduke's service to the army of the States, were
+included in this division, and were as eager to do credit to their new
+chief as were the mutineers in the archduke's army to merit the
+approbation of their sovereign.
+
+The rearguard under Tempel was made up, like the other divisions,
+of the blended nationalities of German, Briton, Hollander, and Walloon,
+and, like the others, was garnished at each flank with heavy cavalry.
+
+The Spanish army, after coming nearly within cannon-shot of their
+adversary, paused.  It was plain that the States' troops were not in so
+great a panic as the more sanguine advisers of the archduke had hoped.
+They were not cowering among the shipping, preparing to escape.  Still
+less had any portion of them already effected their retreat in those
+vessels, a few of which had so excited the enemy's ardour when they came
+in sight.  It was obvious that a great struggle, in which the forces were
+very evenly balanced, was now to be fought out upon those sands.  It was
+a splendid tournament--a great duel for life and death between the
+champions of the Papacy and of Protestantism, of the Republic and of
+absolutism, that was to be fought out that midsummer's day.  The lists
+were closed.  The trumpet signal for the fray would soon be blown.
+
+The archduke, in Milanese armour, on a wonderfully beautiful snow-white
+Spanish stallion, moved in the centre of his army.  He wore no helmet,
+that his men might the more readily recognize him as he rode gallantly to
+and fro, marshalling, encouraging, exhorting the troops.  Never before
+had he manifested such decided military talent, combined with
+unquestionable personal valour, as he had done since this campaign began.
+Friend and foe agreed that day that Albert fought like a lion.  He was at
+first well seconded by Mendoza, who led the van, and by Villars, La
+Bourlotte, Avalos, Zapena, and many other officers of note.  The mutinous
+Spanish and Italian cavalry, combined with a few choice squadrons of
+Walloon and German horse, were placed in front and on the flanks.  They
+were under the special supervision of the admiral, who marshalled their
+squadrons and directed their charging, although mounted on a hackney
+himself, and not intending to participate in the action.  Then came the
+battalia and rear, crowding very closely upon each other.
+
+Face to face with them stood the republican host, drawn up in great solid
+squares of infantry, their standards waving above each closely planted
+clump of pikemen, with the musketeers fringing their skirts, while the
+iron-clad ponderous cavalry of Count Lewis and Marcellus Bax, in black
+casque and, corslet, were in front, restlessly expecting the signal for
+the onset.  The volunteers of high rank who were then serving on the
+staff of the stadholder--the Duke of Holstein, the Prince of Anhalt, two
+young Counts Solms, and others--had been invited and even urged to
+abandon the field while there was yet time for setting them on board the
+fleet.  Especially it was thought desirable that young Frederic Henry,
+a mere boy, on whom the hopes of the Orange-Nassau house would rest if
+Maurice fell in the conflict, should be spared the fate which seemed
+hanging over the commonwealth and her defenders.  But the son of William
+the Silent implored his brother with clasped hands not to send him from
+his side at that moment, so that Maurice granted his prayer, and caused
+him to be provided with a complete suit of armour.  Thus in company with
+young Coligny--a lad of his own age, and like himself a grandson of the
+great admiral--the youth who was one day to play so noble a part on the
+stage of the world's affairs was now to be engaged in his first great
+passage of arms.  No one left the field but Sir Robert Sidney, who had
+come over from Ostend, from irrepressible curiosity to witness the
+arrangements, but who would obviously have been guilty of unpardonable
+negligence had he been absent at such a crisis from the important post of
+which he was governor for the queen.
+
+The arena of the conflict seemed elaborately prepared by the hand of
+nature.  The hard, level, sandy beach, swept clean and smooth by the
+ceaseless action of the tides, stretched out far as the eye could reach
+in one long, bold, monotonous line.  Like the whole coast of Flanders and
+of Holland, it seemed drawn by a geometrical rule, not a cape, cove, or
+estuary breaking the perfect straightness of the design.  On the right,
+just beyond high-water mark, the downs, fantastically heaped together
+like a mimic mountain chain, or like tempestuous ocean-waves suddenly
+changed to sand, rolled wild and confused, but still in a regularly
+parallel course with the line of the beach.  They seemed a barrier thrown
+up to protect the land from being bitten quite away by the ever-restless
+and encroaching sea.  Beyond the downs, which were seven hundred yards in
+width; extended a level tract of those green fertile meadows,
+artificially drained, which are so characteristic a feature of the
+Netherland landscapes, the stream which ran from Ostend towards the town
+of Nieuport flowing sluggishly through them. It was a bright warm
+midsummer day.  The waves of the German Ocean came lazily rolling in upon
+the crisp yellow sand, the surf breaking with its monotonous music at the
+very feet of the armies.  A gentle south-west breeze was blowing, just
+filling the sails of more than a thousand ships in the offing, which
+moved languidly along the sparkling sea.  It was an atmosphere better
+befitting a tranquil holiday than the scene of carnage which seemed
+approaching.
+
+Maurice of Nassau, in complete armour, rapier in hand, with the orange-
+plumes waving from his helmet and the orange-scarf across his breast,
+rode through the lines, briefly addressing his soldiers with martial
+energy.  Pointing to the harbour of Nieuport behind them, now again
+impassable with the flood, to the ocean on the left where rode the fleet,
+carrying with it all hope of escape by sea, and to the army of the
+archduke in front, almost within cannon-range, he simply observed that
+they had no possible choice between victory and death.  They must either
+utterly overthrow the Spanish army, he said, or drink all the waters of
+the sea.  Either drowning or butchery was their doom if they were
+conquered, for no quarter was to be expected from their unscrupulous and
+insolent foe.  He was there to share their fate, to conquer or to perish
+with them, and from their tried valour and from the God of battles he
+hoped a more magnificent victory than had ever before been achieved in
+this almost perpetual war for independence.  The troops, perfectly
+enthusiastic, replied with a shout that they were ready to live or die
+with their chieftain, and eagerly demanded to be led upon the foe.
+Whether from hope or from desperation they were confident and cheerful.
+Some doubt was felt as to the Walloons, who had so lately transferred
+themselves from the archduke's army, but their commander, Marquette, made
+them all lift up their hands, and swear solemnly to live or die that day
+at the feet of Prince Maurice.
+
+Two hours long these two armies had stood looking each other in the face.
+It was near two o'clock when the arch duke at last gave the signal to
+advance.  The tide was again almost at the full.  Maurice stood firm,
+awaiting the assault; the enemy slowly coming nearer, and the rising tide
+as steadily lapping away all that was left of the hard beach which
+fringed the rugged downs.  Count Lewis chafed with impatience as it
+became each moment more evident that there would be no beach left for
+cavalry fighting, while in the downs the manoeuvring of horse was
+entirely impossible.  Meantime, by command of Vere, all those sandy
+hillocks and steeps had been thickly sown with musketeers and pikemen.
+Arquebus-men and carabineers were planted in every hollow, while on the
+highest and most advantageous elevation two pieces of cannon had been
+placed by the express direction of Maurice.  It seemed obvious that the
+battle would, after all, be transferred to the downs.  Not long before
+the action began, a private of the enemy's cavalry was taken, apparently
+with his own consent, in a very trifling preliminary skirmish.  He
+bragged loudly of the immense force of the archduke, of the great victory
+already gained over Ernest, with the utter annihilation of his forces,
+and of the impending destruction of the whole States' army.  Strange to
+say, this was the first intimation received by Count Lewis of that grave
+disaster, although it had been for some hours known to Maurice.  The
+prisoner was at once gagged, that he might spread his disheartening news
+no further, but as he persisted by signs and gestures in attempting to
+convey the information which he had evidently been sent forward to
+impart, he was shot by command of the stadholder, and so told no further
+tales.
+
+The enemy had now come very close, and it was the desire of Count Lewis
+that a couple of companies of horse, in accordance with the commands of
+Maurice, should charge the cavalry in front, and that after a brief
+skirmish they should retreat as if panic-stricken behind the advance
+column, thus decoying the Spanish vanguard in hot pursuit towards the
+battery upon the edge of the downs.  The cannon were then suddenly to
+open upon them, and during the confusion sure to be created in their
+ranks, the musketeers, ambushed among the hollows, were to attack them
+in flank, while the cavalry in one mass should then make a concentrated
+charge in front.  It seemed certain that the effect of this movement
+would be to hurl the whole of the enemy's advance, horse and foot, back
+upon his battalia, and thus to break up his army in irretrievable rout.
+The plan was a sensible one, but it was not ingeniously executed.  Before
+the handful of cavalry had time to make the proposed feint the
+cannoneers, being unduly excited, and by express command of Sir Francis
+Vere, fired a volley into the advancing columns of the archduke.  This
+precipitated the action; almost in an instant changed its whole
+character, and defeated the original plan of the republican leader.
+The enemy's cavalry broke at the first discharge from the battery, and
+wheeled in considerable disorder, but without panic, quite into and
+across the downs.  The whole army of the archduke, which had already been
+veering in the same direction, as it advanced, both because the tide was
+so steadily devouring the even surface of the sands, and because the
+position of a large portion of the States' forces among the hillocks
+exposed him to an attack in flank, was now rapidly transferred to the
+downs.  It was necessary for that portion of Maurice's army which still
+stood on what remained of the beach to follow this movement.  A rapid
+change of front was then undertaken, and--thanks to the careful system
+of wheeling, marching, and counter-marching in which the army had been
+educated by William Lewis and Maurice--was executed with less confusion
+than might have been expected.
+
+But very few companies of infantry now remained on the strip of beach
+still bare of the waves, and in the immediate vicinity of the artillery
+planted high and dry beyond their reach.
+
+The scene was transformed as if by magic, and the battle was now to be
+fought out in those shifting, uneven hills and hollows, where every
+soldier stood mid-leg deep in the dry and burning sand.  Fortunately for
+the States' army, the wind was in its back, blowing both sand and smoke
+into the faces of its antagonists, while the already weltering sun glared
+fiercely in their eyes.  Maurice had skilfully made use of the great
+advantage which accident had given him that day, and his very refusal to
+advance and to bring on a premature struggle thus stood him in stead in a
+variety of ways Lewis Gunther was now ordered, with Marcellus Bax and six
+squadrons of horse, to take position within the belt of pasture land on
+the right of the downs.  When he arrived there the van of the archduke's
+infantry had already charged the States' advance under Vere, while just
+behind and on the side of the musketeers and pikemen a large portion of
+the enemy's cavalry was standing stock still on the green.  Without
+waiting for instructions Lewis ordered a charge.  It was brilliantly
+successful.  Unheeding a warm salutation in flank from the musketeers as
+they rode by them, and notwithstanding that they were obliged to take
+several ditches as they charged, they routed the enemy's cavalry at the
+first onset, and drove them into panic-stricken flight.  Some fled for
+protection quite to the rear of their infantry, others were hotly pursued
+across the meadows till they took refuge under the walls of Nieuport.
+The very success of the attack was nearly fatal however to Count Lewis;
+for, unable to restrain the ardour of his troopers in the chase, he found
+himself cut off from the army with only ten horsemen to support him, and
+completely enveloped by the enemy.  Fortunately Prince Maurice had
+foreseen the danger, and had ordered all the cavalry to the meadows so
+soon as the charge was made.  Captain Kloet, with a fresh company of
+mounted carabineers, marked the little squad of States' cavalry careering
+about in the midst of the Catholics, recognized their leader by the
+orange-plumes on his calque, and dashed forward to the rescue.  Lewis
+again found himself at the head of his cavalry, but was obliged to wait
+a long time for the return of the stragglers.
+
+While this brilliant diversion had been enacting as it were on the fringe
+of the battle, its real bustle and business had been going on in the
+downs.  Just as Lewis made his charge in the pastures, the infantry of
+the archduke and the advance guard of the republicans met in deadly
+shock.  More than an hour long they contended with varying success.
+Musketeers, pikemen, arquebusmen, swordmen, charged, sabred, or shot each
+other from the various hollows or heights of vantage, plunging knee-deep
+in the sand, torn and impeded by the prickly broom-plant which grew
+profusely over the whole surface, and fighting breast to breast and hand
+to hand in a vast series of individual encounters.  Thrice were the
+Spaniards repulsed in what for a moment seemed absolute rout, thrice they
+rallied and drove their assailants at push of pike far beyond their
+original position; and again the conquered republicans recovered their
+energy and smote their adversaries as if the contest were just begun.
+The tide of battle ebbed and flowed like the waves of the sea, but it
+would be mere pedantry to affect any technical explanation of its various
+changes.  It was a hot struggle of twenty thousand men, pent up in a
+narrow space, where the very nature of the ground had made artistic
+evolutions nearly impracticable.  The advance, the battalia, even the
+rearguard on both sides were mixed together pell-mell, and the downs were
+soon covered at every step with the dead and dying-Briton, Hollander,
+Spaniard, Italian, Frisian, Frenchman, Walloon, fighting and falling
+together, and hotly contesting every inch of those barren sands.
+
+It seemed, said one who fought there, as if the last day of the world had
+come.
+
+Political and religious hatred, pride of race, remembrance of a half-
+century of wrongs, hope, fury, and despair; these were the real elements
+contending with each other that summer's day.  It was a mere trial of
+ferocity and endurance, not more scientific than a fight between packs of
+wolves and of bloodhounds.
+
+No doubt the brunt of the conflict fell upon Vere, with his Englishmen
+and Frisians, for this advance-guard made up nearly one-half of the
+States' army actually engaged.  And most nobly, indefatigably, did the
+hardy veteran discharge his duty.  Having personally superintended almost
+all the arrangements in the morning, he fought all day in the front,
+doing the work both of a field-marshal and a corporal.
+
+He was twice wounded, shot each time through the same leg, yet still
+fought on as if it were some one else's blood and not his own that was
+flowing from "those four holes in his flesh."  He complained that he was
+not sufficiently seconded, and that the reserves were not brought up
+rapidly enough to his support.  He was manifestly unjust, for although
+it could not be doubted that the English and the Frisians did their best,
+it was equally certain that every part of the army was as staunch as the
+vanguard.  It may be safely asserted that it would not have benefited the
+cause of the States, had every man been thrown into the fight at one and
+the same moment.
+
+During this "bloody bit," as Vere called it, between the infantry on both
+sides, the little battery of two field-pieces planted on the highest
+hillock of the downs had been very effective.  Meantime, while the
+desperate and decisive struggle had been going on, Lewis Gunther, in the
+meadow, had again rallied all the cavalry, which, at the first stage of
+the action, had been dispersed in pursuit of the enemy's horse.
+Gathering them together in a mass, he besought Prince Maurice to order
+him to charge.  The stadholder bade him pause yet a little longer.  The
+aspect of the infantry fight was not yet, in his opinion, sufficiently
+favourable.  Again and again Lewis sent fresh entreaties, and at last
+received the desired permission.  Placing three picked squadrons in
+front, the young general made a furious assault upon the Catholic
+cavalry, which had again rallied and was drawn up very close to the
+musketeers.  Fortune was not so kind to him as at the earlier stage of
+the combat.  The charge was received with dauntless front by the Spanish
+and Italian horse, while at the same moment the infantry poured a severe
+fire into their assailants.  The advancing squadrons faltered, wheeled
+back upon the companies following them, and the whole mass of the
+republican cavalry broke into wild and disorderly retreat.  At the same
+moment the archduke, observing his advantage, threw in his last reserves
+of infantry, and again there was a desperate charge upon Vere's wearied
+troops, as decisive as the counter charge of Lewis's cavalry had been
+unsuccessful.  The English and Frisians, sorely tried during those hours
+of fighting with superior numbers in the intolerable heat, broke at last
+and turned their backs upon the foe.  Some of them fled panic-stricken
+quite across the downs and threw themselves into the sea, but the mass
+retreated in a comparatively orderly manner, being driven from one down
+to another, and seeking a last refuge behind the battery placed on the
+high-water line of the beach.  In the confusion and panic Sir Francis
+Vere went down at last.  His horse, killed by a stray shot fell with and
+upon him, and the heroic Englishman would then and there have finished
+his career--for he would hardly have found quarter from the Spaniards--
+had not Sir Robert Drury, riding by in the tumult, observed him as he lay
+almost exhausted in the sand.  By his exertion and that of his servant
+Higham, Vere was rescued from his perilous situation, placed on the
+crupper of Sir Robert's horse, and so borne off the field.
+
+The current of the retreating and pursuing hosts swept by the spot where
+Maurice sat on horseback, watching and directing the battle.  His bravest
+and best general, the veteran Vere, had fallen; his cousin Lewis was now
+as utterly overthrown as his brother Ernest had been but a few hours
+before at the fatal bridge of Leffingen; the whole army, the only army,
+of the States was defeated, broken, panic-struck; the Spanish shouts of
+victory rang on every side.  Plainly the day was lost, and with it the
+republic.  In the blackest hour that the Netherland commonwealth had ever
+known, the fortitude of the stadholder did not desert him.  Immoveable
+as a rock in the torrent he stemmed the flight of his troops.  Three
+squadrons of reserved cavalry, Balen's own, Vere's own, and Cecil's, were
+all that was left him, and at the head of these he essayed an advance.
+He seemed the only man on the field not frightened; and menacing,
+conjuring, persuading the fugitives for the love of fatherland, of
+himself and his house, of their own honour, not to disgrace and destroy
+themselves for ever; urging that all was not yet lost, and beseeching
+them at least to take despair for their master, and rather to die like
+men on the field than to drown like dogs in the sea, he succeeded in
+rallying a portion of those nearest him.  The enemy paused in their mad
+pursuit, impressed even more than were the States' troops at the
+dauntless bearing of the prince.  It was one of those supreme moments
+in battle and in history which are sometimes permitted to influence the
+course of events during a long future.  The archduke and his generals
+committed a grave error in pausing for an instant in their career.  Very
+soon it was too late to repair the fault, for the quick and correct eye
+of the stadholder saw the point to which the whole battle was tending,
+and he threw his handful of reserved cavalry, with such of the fugitives
+as had rallied, straight towards the battery on the beach.
+
+It was arranged that Balen should charge on the strand, Horace Vere
+through the upper downs, and Cecil along the margin of the beach.  Balen
+rode slowly through the heavy sand, keeping his horses well in wind, and
+at the moment he touched the beach, rushed with fury upon the enemy's
+foot near the battery.  The moment was most opportune, for the last shot
+had been fired from the guns, and they had just been nearly abandoned in
+despair.  The onset of Balen was successful: the Spanish infantry, thus
+suddenly attached, were broken, and many were killed and taken.  Cecil
+and Vere were equally fortunate, so that the retreating English and
+Frisians began to hold firm again.  It was the very crisis of the battle,
+which up to that instant seemed wholly lost by the republic, so universal
+was the overthrow and the flight.  Some hundred and fifty Frisian pikemen
+now rallied from their sullen retreat, and drove the enemy off one
+hillock or dune.
+
+Foiled in their attempt to intercept the backward movement of the States'
+army and to seize this vital point and the artillery with it, the
+Spaniards hesitated and were somewhat discouraged.  Some Zeeland sailors,
+who had stuck like wax to those demi-cannon during the whole conflict,
+now promptly obeyed orders to open yet once more upon the victorious foe.
+At the first volley the Spaniards were staggered, and the sailors with a
+lively shout of "Ian-fall on," inspired the defeated army with a portion
+of their own cheerfulness.  Others vehemently shouted victory without any
+reason whatever.  At that instant Maurice ordered a last charge by those
+few cavalry squadrons, while the enemy was faltering under the play of
+the artillery.  It was a forlorn hope, yet such was the shifting fortune
+of that memorable day that the charge decided the battle.  The whole line
+of the enemy broke, the conquered became the victors, the fugitives
+quickly rallying and shouting victory almost before they had turned their
+faces to the foe, became in their turn the pursuers.  The Catholic army
+could no longer be brought to a stand, but fled wildly in every
+direction, and were shot and stabbed by the republicans as they fled.
+The Admiral of Arragon fell with his hackney in this last charge.
+Unwounded, but struggling to extricate himself from his horse that had
+been killed, he was quickly surrounded by the enemy.
+
+Two Spaniards, Mendo and Villalobos by name, who had recently deserted
+to the States, came up at the moment and recognised the fallen admiral.
+They had reason to recognise him, for both had been in his service, and
+one of them, who was once in immediate household attendance upon him,
+bore the mark of a wound which he had received from his insolent master.
+"Admiral, look at this," cried Villalobos, pointing to the scar on his
+face.  The admiral looked and knew his old servants, and gave his scarf
+to the one and the hanger of his sword-belt to the other, as tokens that
+he was their prisoner.  Thus his life was saved for heavy ransom, of
+which those who had actually captured him would receive a very trifling
+portion.  The great prisoner was carried to the rear, where he
+immediately asked for food and drink, and fell to with an appetite,
+while the pursuit and slaughter went on in all directions.
+
+The archduke, too, whose personal conduct throughout the day was
+admirable, had been slightly wounded by a halberd stroke on the ear.
+This was at an earlier stage of the action, and he had subsequently
+mounted another horse, exchanged his splendid armour for a plain black
+harness, over which he wore a shabby scarf.  In the confusion of the rout
+he was hard beset.  "Surrender, scoundrel!"  cried a Walloon pikeman,
+seizing his horse by the bridle.  But a certain Flemish Captain Kabbeljaw
+recognising his sovereign and rushing to his rescue, slew his assailant
+and four others with his own hand.  He was at last himself killed, but
+Albert escaped, and, accompanied by the Duke of Aumale, who was also
+slightly wounded, by Colonel La Bourlotte, and half a dozen troopers rode
+for their life in the direction of Bruges.  When they reached the fatal
+bridge of Leffingen, over which the archduke had marched so triumphantly
+but a few hours before to annihilate Count Ernest's division, he was
+nearly taken prisoner.  A few soldiers, collected from the scattered
+garrisons, had occupied the position, but knowing nothing of the result
+of the action in the downs, took to their heels and fled as the little
+party of cavaliers advanced.  Had the commander at Ostend or the States-
+General promptly sent out a company or two so soon as the news of the
+victory reached them to seize this vital point, the doom of the archduke
+would have been sealed.  Nothing then could have saved him from capture.
+Fortunately escaping this danger, he now pushed on, and never pulled
+bridle till he reached Bruges.  Thence without pausing he was conveyed to
+Ghent, where he presented himself to the Infanta.  He was not accompanied
+by the captive Maurice of Nassau, and the curiosity of the princess to
+know how that warrior would demean himself as a prisoner was not destined
+on this occasion to be gratified.
+
+Isabella bore the disappointment and the bitter intelligence of the
+defeat with a stoicism worthy of her departed father.  She had already
+had intimations that the day was going against her army, and had
+successively received tidings that her husband was killed, was
+dangerously wounded, was a prisoner; and she was now almost relieved
+to receive him, utterly defeated, but still safe and sound.
+
+Meantime the mad chase continued along the beach and through the downs.
+Never was a rout more absolute than that of Albert's army.  Never had so
+brilliant a victory been achieved by Hollander or Spaniard upon that
+great battleground of Europe--the Netherlands.
+
+Maurice, to whom the chief credit of the victory was unquestionably due,
+had been firm and impassive during the various aspects of the battle,
+never losing his self-command when affairs seemed blackest.  So soon,
+however, as the triumph, after wavering so long, was decided in his
+favour--the veteran legions of Spain and Italy, the picked troops of
+Christendom, all flying at last before his troops--the stadholder was
+fairly melted.  Dismounting from his horse, he threw himself on his knees
+in the sand, and with streaming eyes and uplifted hands exclaimed,
+"O God, what are we human creatures to whom Thou hast brought such
+honour, and to whom Thou hast vouchsafed such a victory!"
+
+The slaughter went on until nightfall, but the wearied conquerors were
+then obliged to desist from the pursuit.  Three thousand Spaniards were
+slain and about six hundred prisoners were taken.  The loss of the
+States' army; including the affair in the morning at Leffingen, was about
+two thousand killed.  Maurice was censured for not following up his
+victory more closely, but the criticism seems unjust.  The night which
+followed the warm summer's day was singularly black and cloudy, the army
+was exhausted, the distance for the enemy to traverse before they found
+themselves safe within their own territory was not great.  In such
+circumstances the stadholder might well deem himself sufficiently
+triumphant to have plucked a splendid victory out of the very jaws of
+death.  All the artillery of the archduke--seven pieces besides the two
+captured from Ernest in the morning--one hundred and twenty standards,
+and a long list of distinguished prisoners, including the Admiral Zapena
+and many other officers of note, were the trophies of the conqueror.
+Maurice passed the night on the battle-field; the admiral supping with
+him in his tent.  Next morning he went to Ostend, where a great
+thanksgiving was held, Uytenbogart preaching an eloquent sermon on the
+116th Psalm.  Afterwards there was a dinner at the house of the States-
+General, in honour of the stadholder, to which the Admiral of Arragon was
+likewise bidden.  That arrogant but discomfited personage was obliged to
+listen to many a rough martial joke at his disaster as they sat at table,
+but he bore the brunt of the encounter with much fortitude.
+
+"Monsieur the Admiral of Arragon," said the stadholder in French, "is
+more fortunate than many of his army.  He has been desiring these four
+years to see Holland.  Now he will make his entrance there without
+striking a blow."  The gibe was perhaps deficient in delicacy towards a
+fallen foe, but a man who had passed a whole winter in murdering his
+prisoners in cold blood might be satisfied if he were stung only by a
+sharp sarcasm or two, when he had himself become a captive.
+
+Others asked him demurely what he thought of these awkward apprentices
+of Holland and Zeeland, who were good enough at fighting behind dykes and
+ramparts of cities, but who never ventured to face a Spanish army in the
+open field.  Mendoza sustained himself with equanimity however, and found
+plenty of answers.  He discussed the battle with coolness, blamed the
+archduke for throwing the whole of his force prematurely into the
+contest, and applauded the prudence of Maurice in keeping his reserves in
+hand.  He ascribed a great share of the result to the States' artillery,
+which had been well placed upon wooden platforms and well served, while
+the archduke's cannon, sinking in the sands, had been of comparatively
+little use.  Especially he expressed a warm admiration for the heroism of
+Maurice in sending away his ships, and in thus leaving himself and his
+soldiers no alternative but death or triumph.
+
+While they still sat at table many of the standards taken from the enemy
+were brought in and exhibited; the stadholder and others amusing
+themselves with reading the inscriptions and devices emblazoned upon
+them.
+
+And thus on the 2nd July, 1600, the army of the States-General, led by
+Maurice of Nassau, had utterly defeated Albert of Austria.
+
+     ["Enfin l'affaire vint auix mains et fut combattu bien furieusement
+     de deux costes l'espace de deux heures.  Enfin Dieu par sa grace
+     voulut que la victoire demeura de more coste."  Such were the simple
+     words in which Maurice announced to his cousin Lewis William his
+     victory in the most important battle that had been fought for half a
+     century.  Not even General Ulysses Grant could be more modest in the
+     hour of immense triumph.]
+
+Strange to say--on another 2nd July, three centuries and two years
+before, a former Albert of Austria had overthrown the emperor Adolphus of
+Nassau, who had then lost both crown and life in the memorable battle of
+Worms.  The imperial shade of Maurice's ancestor had been signally
+appeased.
+
+In Ostend, as may well be imagined, ineffable joy had succeeded to the
+horrible gloom in which the day had been passed, ever since the tidings
+had been received of Ernest's overthrow.
+
+Those very cavalry men, who had remained all day cowering behind the
+walls of the city, seeing by the clouds of dust which marked the track of
+the fugitives that the battle had been won by the comrades whom they had
+so basely deserted in the morning, had been eager enough to join in the
+pursuit.  It was with difficulty that the States, who had been unable to
+drive them out of the town while the fight was impending or going on,
+could keep enough of them within the walls to guard the city against
+possible accident, now that the work was done.  Even had they taken the
+field a few hours earlier, without participating in the action, or
+risking their own lives, they might have secured the pass of Leffingen,
+and made the capture of the archduke or his destruction inevitable.
+
+The city, which had seemed deserted, swarmed with the garrison and with
+the lately trembling burghers, for it seemed to all as if they had been
+born again.  Even the soldiers on the battle-field had embraced each
+other like comrades who had met in another world.  "Blessed be His holy
+name," said the stadholder's chaplain, "for His right hand has led us
+into hell and brought us forth again.  I know not," he continued, "if I
+am awake or if I dream, when I think how God has in one moment raised us
+from the dead."
+
+Lewis Gunther, whose services had been so conspicuous, was well rewarded.
+"I hope," said that general, writing to his brother Lewis William, "that
+this day's work will not have been useless to me, both for what I have
+learned in it and for another thing.  His Excellency has done me
+the honour to give me the admiral for my prisoner."  And equally
+characteristic was the reply of the religious and thrifty stadholder
+of Friesland.
+
+"I thank God," he said, "for His singular grace in that He has been
+pleased to make use of your person as the instrument of so renowned and
+signal a victory, for which, as you have derived therefrom not mediocre
+praise, and acquired a great reputation, it should be now your duty to
+humble yourself before God, and to acknowledge that it is He alone who
+has thus honoured you .  .  .  .  You should reverence Him the more, that
+while others are admonished of their duty by misfortunes and miseries,
+the good God invites you to His love by benefits and honours .  .  .  .
+I am very glad, too, that his Excellency has given you the admiral for
+your prisoner, both because of the benefit to you, and because it is a
+mark of your merit on that day.  Knowing the state of our affairs, you
+will now be able to free your patrimony from encumbrances, when otherwise
+you would have been in danger of remaining embarrassed and in the power
+of others.  It will therefore be a perpetual honour to you that you, the
+youngest of us all, have been able by your merits to do more to raise up
+our house out of its difficulties than your predecessors or myself have
+been able to do."
+
+The beautiful white horse which the archduke had ridden during the battle
+fell into the hands of Lewis Gunther, and was presented by him to Prince
+Maurice, who had expressed great admiration of the charger.  It was a
+Spanish horse, for which the archduke had lately paid eleven hundred
+crowns.
+
+A white hackney of the Infanta had also been taken, and became the
+property of Count Ernest.
+
+The news of the great battle spread with unexampled rapidity, not only
+through the Netherlands but to neighbouring countries.  On the night of
+the 7th July (N.S.) five days after the event, Envoy Caron, in England,
+received intimations of the favourable news from the French ambassador,
+who had received a letter from the Governor of Calais.  Next morning,
+very early, he waited on Sir Robert Cecil at Greenwich, and was admitted
+to his chamber, although the secretary was not yet out of bed.  He, too,
+had heard of the battle, but Richardot had informed the English
+ambassador in Paris that the victory had been gained, not by the
+stadholder, but by the archduke.  While they were talking, a despatch-
+bearer arrived with letters from Vere to Cecil, and from the States-
+General to Caron, dated on the 3rd July.  There could no longer be any
+doubt on the subject, and the envoy of the republic had now full details
+of the glorious triumph which the Spanish agent in Paris had endeavoured
+for a time to distort into a defeat.
+
+While the two were conversing, the queen, who had heard of Caron's
+presence in the palace, sent down for the latest intelligence.  Cecil
+made notes of the most important points in the despatches to be forthwith
+conveyed to her Majesty.  The queen, not satisfied however, sent for
+Caron himself.  That diplomatist, who had just ridden down from London in
+foul weather, was accordingly obliged to present himself--booted and
+spurred and splashed with mud from head to foot--before her Majesty.
+Elizabeth received him with such extraordinary manifestations of delight
+at the tidings that he was absolutely amazed, and she insisted upon his
+reading the whole of the letter just received from Olden-Barneveld, her
+Majesty listening very patiently as he translated it out of Dutch into
+French.  She then expressed unbounded admiration of the States-General
+and of Prince Maurice.  The sagacious administration of the States'
+government is so full of good order and policy," she said, "as to far
+surpass in its wisdom the intelligence of all kings and potentates."
+We kings," she said, "understand nothing of such affairs in comparison,
+but require, all of us, to go to school to the States-General."  She
+continued to speak in terms of warm approbation of the secrecy and
+discretion with which the invasion of Flanders had been conducted, and
+protested that she thanked God on both knees for vouchsafing such a
+splendid victory to the United Provinces.
+
+Yet after all, her Majesty, as mankind in general, both wise and simple,
+are apt to do, had judged only according to the result, and the immediate
+result.  No doubt John of Barneveld was second to no living statesman in
+breadth of view and adroitness of handling, yet the invasion of Flanders,
+which was purely his work, was unquestionably a grave mistake, and might
+easily have proved a fatal one.  That the deadly peril was escaped was
+due, not to his prudence, but to the heroism of Maurice, the gallantry of
+Vere, Count Lewis Gunther, and the forces under them, and the noble self-
+devotion of Ernest.  And even, despite the exertions of these brave men,
+it seems certain that victory would have been impossible had the archduke
+possessed that true appreciation of a situation which marks the
+consummate general.
+
+Surely the Lord seemed to have delivered the enemy into his hands that
+morning.  Maurice was shut in between Nieuport on one side and the
+archduke's army on the other, planted as it was on the only road of
+retreat.  Had Albert entrenched himself, Maurice must either have
+attacked at great disadvantage or attempted embarkation in the face of
+his enemy.  To stay indefinitely where he was would have proved an
+impossibility, and amid the confusion necessary to the shipping of his
+army, how could he have protected himself by six demi-cannon placed on
+the sea-beach?
+
+That Maurice was able to extricate himself from the horrible dilemma in
+which he had been placed, through no fault of his own, and to convert
+imminent disaster into magnificent victory, will always redound to his
+reputation as a great military chief.  And this was all the fruit of the
+expedition, planned, as Elizabeth thought, with so much secrecy and
+discretion.  Three days after the battle the stadholder came again before
+Nieuport, only to find the garrison strengthened meantime by La Bourlotte
+to three thousand men.  A rainy week succeeded, and Maurice then
+announced to the States-General the necessity of abandoning an
+enterprise, a successful issue to which was in his opinion impossible.
+The States-General, grown more modest in military matters, testified
+their willingness to be governed by his better judgment, and left Ostend
+for the Hague on the 18th July.  Maurice, after a little skirmishing with
+some of the forts around that city, in one of which the archduke's
+general La Bourlotte was killed, decided to close the campaign, and he
+returned with his whole army on the last day of July into Holland.
+
+The expedition was an absolute failure, but the stadholder had gained a
+great victory.  The effect produced at home and abroad by this triumphant
+measuring of the republican forces, horse, foot, and artillery, in a
+pitched battle and on so conspicuous an arena, with the picked veterans
+of Spain and Italy, was perhaps worth the cost, but no other benefit was
+derived from the invasion of Flanders.
+
+The most healthy moral to be drawn from this brief but memorable campaign
+is that the wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war,
+success in which seems to require a special education and a distinct
+genius.  Alternation between hope and despair, between culpable audacity
+and exaggerated prudence, are but too apt to mark the warlike counsels of
+politicians who have not been bred soldiers.  This, at least, had been
+eminently the case with Barneveld and his colleagues of the States-
+General.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains
+Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence
+The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY UNITED NETHERLANDS, 1600 ***
+
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