History of the United Netherlands, 1590a | Page 2

the twig was becoming the tree--'tandem fit surculus arbor'--
according to the device assumed by the son of William the Silent after
his father's death.
The Netherlands had sore need of a practical soldier to contend with the
scientific and professional tyrants against whom they had so long been
struggling, and Maurice, although so young, was pre-eminently a
practical man. He was no enthusiast; he was no poet. He was at that
period certainly no politician. Not often at the age of twenty has a man
devoted himself for years to pure mathematics for the purpose of saving
his country. Yet this was Maurice's scheme. Four years long and more,
when most other youths in his position and at that epoch would have
been alternating between frivolous pleasures and brilliant exploits in
the field, the young prince had spent laborious days and nights with the
learned Simon Stevinus of Bruges. The scientific work which they
composed in common, the credit of which the master assigned to the
pupil, might have been more justly attributed perhaps to the professor
than to the prince, but it is certain that Maurice was an apt scholar.
In that country, ever held in existence by main human force against the
elements, the arts of engineering, hydrostatics and kindred branches
were of necessity much cultivated. It was reserved for the young
mathematician to make them as potent against a human foe.
Moreover, there were symptoms that the military discipline, learning
and practical skill, which had almost made Spain the mistress of the
world, were sinking into decay. Farnese, although still in the prime of
life, was broken in health, and there seemed no one fit to take the place
of himself and his lieutenants when they should be removed from the
scene where they had played. their parts so consummately. The army of
the Netherlands was still to be created. Thus far the contest had been
mainly carried on by domestic militia and foreign volunteers or
hirelings. The train-bands of the cities were aided in their struggles
against Spanish pikemen and artillerists, Italian and Albanian cavalry
by the German riders, whom every little potentate was anxious to sell
to either combatant according to the highest bid, and by English
mercenaries, whom the love of adventure or the hope of plunder sent
forth under such well-seasoned captains as Williams and Morgan, Vere
and the Norrises, Baskerville and Willoughby.

But a Dutch army there was none and Maurice had determined that at
last a national force should be created. In this enterprise he was aided
and guided by his cousin Lewis William, Stadtholder of Friesland--the
quaint, rugged little hero, young in years but almost a veteran in the
wars of freedom, who was as genial and intellectual in council as he
was reckless and impulsive in the field.
Lewis William had felt that the old military art was dying out and that--
there was nothing to take its place. He was a diligent student of
antiquity. He had revived in the swamps of Friesland the old
manoeuvres, the quickness of wheeling, the strengthening, without
breaking ranks or columns, by which the ancient Romans had
performed so much excellent work in their day, and which seemed to
have passed entirely into oblivion. Old colonels and rittmasters, who
had never heard of Leo the Thracian nor the Macedonian phalanx,
smiled and shrugged their shoulders, as they listened to the questions of
the young count, or gazed with profound astonishment at the eccentric
evolutions to which he was accustoming his troops. From the heights of
superior wisdom they looked down with pity upon these innovations on
the good old battle order. They were accustomed to great solid squares
of troops wheeling in one way, steadily, deliberately, all together, by
one impulse and as one man. It was true that in narrow fields, and when
the enemy was pressing, such stately evolutions often became
impossible or ensured defeat; but when the little Stadtholder drilled his
soldiers in small bodies of various shapes, teaching them to turn,
advance; retreat; wheel in a variety of ways, sometimes in considerable
masses, sometimes man by man, sending the foremost suddenly to the
rear, or bringing the hindmost ranks to the front, and began to attempt
all this in narrow fields as well as in wide ones, and when the enemy
was in sight, men stood aghast at his want of reverence, or laughed at
him as a pedant. But there came a day when they did not laugh, neither
friends nor enemies. Meantime the two cousins, who directed all the
military operations in the provinces, understood each other thoroughly
and proceeded to perfect their new system, to be adopted at a later
period by all civilized nations.
The regular army of the Netherlands was small in number