this force and the preparations for ensuring the success of the
enterprise with the vast expeditions and gigantic armaments of later
times, especially with the tremendous exhibitions of military and naval
energy with which our own civil war has made us familiar. Maurice was an
adept in all that science and art had as yet bequeathed to humanity for
the purpose of human' destruction, but the number of his troops was small
compared to the mighty hosts which the world since those days has seen
embattled. War, as a trade, was then less easily learned. It was a
guild in which apprenticeship was difficult, and in which enrolment was
usually for life. A little republic of scarce three million souls, which
could keep always on foot a regular well-appointed army of twenty-five
thousand men and a navy of one or two hundred heavily armed cruisers, was
both a marvel and a formidable element in the general polity of the
world. The lesson to be derived both in military and political
philosophy from the famous campaign of Nieuport does not depend for its
value on the numbers of the ships or soldiers engaged in the undertaking.
Otherwise, and had it been merely a military expedition like a thousand
others which have been made and forgotten, it would not now deserve more
than a momentary attention. But the circumstances were such as to make
the issue of the impending battle one of the most important in human
history. It was entirely possible that an overwhelming defeat of the
republican forces on this foreign expedition would bring with it an
absolute destruction of the republic, and place Spain once more in
possession of the heretic "islands," from which basis she would menace
the very existence of England more seriously than she had ever done
before. Who could measure the consequences to Christendom of such a
catastrophe?

The distance from the place where the fleet and army were assembled to
Nieuport--the objective point of the enterprise--was but thirty-five