History of the United Netherlands, 1597-98 | Page 4

Maurice look calmly on while the enemy,
whom he had made so painful a forced march to meet, moved off out of
reach before his eyes? Yet certainly this was no slight triumph in itself.
There sat the stadholder on his horse at the head of eight hundred
carabineers, and there marched four of Philip's best infantry regiments,
garnished with some of his most renowned cavalry squadrons, anxious
not to seek but to avoid a combat. First came the Germans of Count
Sultz, the musketeers in front, and the spearsmen, of which the bulk of
this and of all the regiments was composed, marching in closely serried
squares, with the company standards waving over each. Next, arranged
in the same manner, came the Walloon regiments of Hachicourt and of
La Barlotte. Fourth and last came the famous Neapolitans of Marquis
Trevico. The cavalry squadrons rode on the left of the infantry, and
were commanded by Nicolas Basta, a man who had been trampling
upon the Netherlanders ever since the days of Alva, with whom he had
first come to the country.
And these were the legions--these very men or their immediate
predecessors--these Italians, Spaniards, Germans, and Walloons, who
during so many terrible years had stormed and sacked almost every city
of the Netherlands, and swept over the whole breadth of those little
provinces as with the besom of destruction.
Both infantry and cavalry, that picked little army of Varax was of the
very best that had shared in the devil's work which had been the chief
industry practised for so long in the obedient Netherlands. Was it not
madness for the stadholder, at the head of eight hundred horsemen, to
assail such an army as this? Was it not to invoke upon his head the
swift vengeance of Heaven? Nevertheless, the painstaking, cautious
Maurice did not hesitate. He ordered Hohenlo, with all the Brabantine
cavalry, to ride as rapidly as their horses could carry them along the
edge of the plain, and behind the tangled woodland, by which the
movement would be concealed. He was at all hazards to intercept the
enemy's vanguard before it should reach the fatal pass. Vere and
Marcellus Bax meanwhile, supported now by Edmont with the
Nymegen squadrons, were to threaten the Spanish rear. A company of

two under Laurentz was kept by Maurice near his person in reserve.
The Spaniards steadily continued their march, but as they became
aware of certain slight and indefinite movements on their left, their
cavalry, changing their position, were transferred from the right to the
left of the line of march, and now rode between the infantry and the belt
of woods.
In a few minutes after the orders given to Hohenlo, that dashing soldier
had circumvented the Spaniards, and emerged upon the plain between
them and the entrance to the defile, The next instant the trumpets
sounded a charge, and Hohenlo fell upon the foremost regiment, that of
Sultz, while the rearguard, consisting of Trevico's Neapolitan regiment,
was assailed by Du Bois, Donck, Rysoir, Marcellus Bax, and Sir
Francis Vere. The effect seemed almost supernatural. The Spanish
cavalry--those far-famed squadrons of Guzman and Basta--broke at the
first onset and galloped off for the pass as if they had been riding a race.
Most of them escaped through the hollow into the morass beyond. The
musketeers of Sultz's regiment hardly fired a shot, and fell back in
confusion upon the thickly clustered pikemen. The assailants, every
one of them in complete armour, on powerful horses, and armed not
with lances but with carbines, trampled over the panic-struck and
struggling masses of leather jerkined pikemen and shot them at arm's
length. The charge upon Trevico's men at the same moment was just as
decisive. In less time than it took afterwards to describe the scene,
those renowned veterans were broken into a helpless mass of dying,
wounded, or fugitive creatures, incapable of striking a blow.
Thus the Germans in the front and the Neapolitans in the rear had been
simultaneously shattered, and rolled together upon the two other
regiments, those of Hachicourt and La Barlotte, which were placed
between them. Nor did these troops offer any better resistance, but were
paralysed and hurled out of existence like the rest. In less than an hour
the Spanish army was demolished. Varax himself lay dead upon the
field, too fortunate not to survive his disgrace. It was hardly more than
daylight on that dull January morning; nine o'clock had scarce chimed
from the old brick steeples of Turnhout, yet two thousand Spaniards
had fallen before the blows of eight hundred Netherlanders, and there
were five hundred prisoners beside. Of Maurice's army not more than
nine or ten were slain. The story sounds like a wild legend. It was as if

the arm of each