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