upon them with great spirit: A fierce, bloody, and confused action
succeeded, in which the patriots were completely overthrown.

Count Louis, finding that the day was lost, and his army cut to pieces,
rallied around him a little band of troopers, among whom were his
brother, Count Henry, and Duke Christopher, and together they made a
final and desperate charge. It was the last that was ever seen of them
on earth. They all went down together, in the midst of the fight, and
were never heard of more. The battle terminated, as usual in those
conflicts of mutual hatred, in a horrible butchery, hardly any of the
patriot army being left to tell the tale of their disaster. At least
four thousand were killed, including those who were slain on the field,
those who were suffocated in the marshes or the river, and those who were
burned in the farm-houses where they had taken refuge. It was uncertain
which of those various modes of death had been the lot of Count Louis,
his brother, and his friend. The mystery was never solved. They had,
probably, all died on the field; but, stripped of their clothing, with
their, faces trampled upon by the hoofs of horses, it was not possible to
distinguish them from the less illustrious dead. It was the opinion of,
many that they had been drowned in the river; of others, that they had
been burned.

[Meteren, v. 91. Bor, vii. 491, 492. Hoofd, Bentivoglio, ubi
sup. The Walloon historian, occasionally cited in these pages, has
a more summary manner of accounting for the fate of these
distinguished personages. According to his statement, the leaders
of the Protestant forces dined and made merry at a convent in the
neighbourhood upon Good Friday, five days before the battle, using
the sacramental chalices at the banquet, and mixing consecrated
wafers with their wine. As a punishment for this sacrilege, the