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 Netherlander had been nerved by the memory of
fifty years of outrage, as if the spectre of their half-century of crime
had appalled the soul of every Spaniard. Like a thunderbolt the son of
William the Silent smote that army of Philip, and in an instant it lay
blasted on the heath of Tiel. At least it could hardly be called
sagacious generalship on the part of the stadholder. The chances were
all against him, and if instead of Varax those legions had been commanded
that morning by old Christopher Mondragon, there might perhaps have been
another tale to tell. Even as it was, there had been a supreme moment
when the Spanish disaster had nearly been changed to victory. The fight
was almost done, when a small party of Staten' cavalry, who at the
beginning of the action had followed the enemy's horse in its sudden
retreat through the gap, came whirling back over the plain in wild