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 Maurice did not hesitate.  He ordered Hohenlo, with all the Brabantine cavalry, to ride as rapidly as their horses could carry them along the edge of the plain, and behind the tangled woodland, by which the movement would be concealed.  He was at all hazards to intercept the enemy’s vanguard before it should reach the fatal pass.  Vere and Marcellus Bax meanwhile, supported now by Edmont with the Nymegen squadrons, were to threaten the Spanish rear.  A company of two under Laurentz was kept by Maurice near his person in reserve.

The Spaniards steadily continued their march, but as they became aware of certain slight and indefinite movements on their left, their cavalry, changing their position, were transferred from the right to the left of the line of march, and now rode between the infantry and the belt of woods.

In a few minutes after the orders given to Hohenlo, that dashing soldier had circumvented the Spaniards, and emerged upon the plain between them and the entrance to the defile, The next instant the trumpets sounded a charge, and Hohenlo fell upon the foremost regiment, that of Sultz, while the rearguard, consisting of Trevico’s Neapolitan regiment, was assailed by Du Bois, Donck, Rysoir, Marcellus Bax, and Sir Francis Vere.  The effect seemed almost supernatural.  The Spanish cavalry—­those far-famed squadrons of Guzman and Basta—­broke at the first onset and galloped off for the pass as if they had been riding a race.  Most of them escaped through the hollow into the morass beyond.  The musketeers of Sultz’s regiment hardly fired a shot, and fell back in confusion upon the thickly clustered pikemen.  The assailants, every one of them in complete armour, on powerful horses, and armed not with lances but with carbines, trampled over the panic-struck and struggling masses of leather jerkined pikemen and shot them at arm’s length.  The charge upon Trevico’s men at the same 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.