for hurry. Why should Meghem's loitering and mutinous troops, arriving
at the eleventh hour, share in the triumph and the spoil? No man knew
the country better than Aremberg, a native of the Netherlands, the
stadholder of the province. Cowardly or heretical motives alone could
sway him, if he now held them back in the very hour of victory. Inflamed
beyond endurance by these taunts, feeling his pride of country touched to
the quick, and willing to show that a Netherlander would lead wherever
Spaniards dared to follow, Aremberg allowed himself to commit the grave
error for which he was so deeply to atone. Disregarding the dictates of
his own experience and the arrangements of his superior, he yielded to
the braggart humor of his soldiers, which he had not, like Alva, learned
to moderate or to despise.

In the mean, time, the body of light troops which had received the fire
from the musical pieces of Groningen was seen to waver. The artillery
was then brought beyond the cover of the wood, and pointed more fully
upon the two main squares of the enemy. A few shots told. Soon
afterward the 'enfans perdus' retreated helter-skelter, entirely
deserting their position.

This apparent advantage, which was only a preconcerted stratagem, was too
much for the fiery Spaniards. They rushed. merrily forward to attack the
stationary squares, their general being no longer able, to restrain their
impetuosity. In a moment the whole van-guard had plunged into the
morass. In a few minutes more they were all helplessly and hopelessly
struggling in the pools, while the musketeers of the enemy poured in a
deadly fire upon them, without wetting the soles of their own feet. The
pikemen, too, who composed the main body of the larger square, now
charged upon all who were extricating themselves from their entanglement,
and drove them back again to a muddy death. Simultaneously, the lesser