the head of the King, that you go not hence alive."

With this decisive answer the messenger had nothing for it but to gallop
back with all haste, in order to participate in what might be left of the
butchery of Count Hoogstraaten's force, and to prevent Vitelli and Don
Frederic in their ill-timed ardor, from crossing the river. This was
properly effected, while in the meantime the whole rear-guard of the
patriots had been slaughtered. A hundred or two, the last who remained,
had made their escape from the field, and had taken refuge in a house in
the neighbourhood. The Spaniards set the buildings on fire, and standing
around with lifted lances, offered the fugitives the choice of being
consumed in the flames or of springing out upon their spears. Thus
entrapped some chose the one course, some the other. A few, to escape
the fury of the fire and the brutality of the Spaniards, stabbed
themselves with their own swords. Others embraced, and then killed each
other, the enemies from below looking on, as at a theatrical exhibition;
now hissing and now applauding, as the death struggles were more or less
to their taste. In a few minutes all the fugitives were dead. Nearly
three thousand of the patriots were slain in this combat, including those
burned or butchered after the battle was over. The Sieur de Louverwal
was taken prisoner, and soon afterwards beheaded in Brussels; but the
greatest misfortune sustained by the liberal party upon this occasion was
the death of Antony de Lalaing, Count of Hoogstraaten. This brave and
generous nobleman, the tried friend of the Prince of Orange, and his
colleague during the memorable scenes at Antwerp, was wounded in the foot
during the action, by an accidental discharge of his own pistol. The
injury, although apparently slight, caused his death in a few days.
There seemed a strange coincidence in his good and evil fortunes.
A casual wound in the hand from his own pistol while he was on his way
to Brussels, to greet Alva upon his first arrival, had saved him from