introduced by Prince Maurice, and now carried to the highest point of
perfection ever attained in that period. There is no doubt whatever,
that for discipline, experience, equipment, effectiveness of movement,
and general organization, the army of the republic was the model army of
Europe. It amounted to but thirty thousand infantry and two thousand
five hundred cavalry, but this number was a large one for a standing army
at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was composed of a
variety of materials, Hollanders, Walloons, Flemings, Scotch, English,
Irish, Germans, but all welded together into a machine of perfect
regularity. The private foot-soldier received twelve florins for a so-
called month of forty-two days, the drummer and corporal eighteen, the
lieutenant fifty-two, and the captain one hundred and fifty florins.
Prompt payment was made every week. Obedience was implicit; mutiny, such
as was of periodical recurrence in the archduke's army, entirely unknown.
The slightest theft was punished with the gallows, and there was
therefore no thieving.

The most accurate and critical observers confessed, almost against their
will, that no army in Europe could compare with the troops of the States.
As to the famous regiments of Sicily, and the ancient legions of Naples
and Milan, a distinguished Venetian envoy, who had seen all the camps and
courts of Christendom, and was certainly not disposed to overrate the
Hollanders at the expense of the Italians, if any rivalry between them
had been possible, declared that every private soldier in the republic
was fit to be a captain in any Italian army; while, on the other hand,
there was scarcely an Italian captain who would be accepted as a private
in any company of the States. So low had the once famous soldiery of
Alva, Don John, and Alexander Farnese descended.

The cavalry of the republic was even more perfectly organized than was