the heath. All were still wallowing and struggling, single file, in the
marshy entrance, through which only the cavalry had forced their way.
Here was a dilemma. Should Maurice look calmly on while the enemy, whom
he had made so painful a forced march to meet, moved off out of reach
before his eyes? Yet certainly this was no slight triumph in itself.
There sat the stadholder on his horse at the head of eight hundred
carabineers, and there marched four of Philip's best infantry regiments,
garnished with some of his most renowned cavalry squadrons, anxious not
to seek but to avoid a combat. First came the Germans of Count Sultz,
the musketeers in front, and the spearsmen, of which the bulk of this and
of all the regiments was composed, marching in closely serried squares,
with the company standards waving over each. Next, arranged in the same
manner, came the Walloon regiments of Hachicourt and of La Barlotte.
Fourth and last came the famous Neapolitans of Marquis Trevico. The
cavalry squadrons rode on the left of the infantry, and were commanded by
Nicolas Basta, a man who had been trampling upon the Netherlanders ever
since the days of Alva, with whom he had first come to the country.

And these were the legions--these very men or their immediate
predecessors--these Italians, Spaniards, Germans, and Walloons, who
during so many terrible years had stormed and sacked almost every city
of the Netherlands, and swept over the whole breadth of those little
provinces as with the besom of destruction.

Both infantry and cavalry, that picked little army of Varax was of the
very best that had shared in the devil's work which had been the chief
industry practised for so long in the obedient Netherlands. Was it not
madness for the stadholder, at the head of eight hundred horsemen, to
assail such an army as this? Was it not to invoke upon his head the
swift vengeance of Heaven? Nevertheless, the painstaking, cautious