Therefore it is that this remarkable action merits a much more attentive consideration than it might deserve, regarded purely as a military exploit.  To the military student a mere cavalry affair, fought out upon an obscure Brabantine heath between a party of Dutch carabineers and Spanish pikemen, may seem of little account—­a subject fitted by picturesque costume and animated action for the pencil of a Wouvermanns or a Terburg, but conveying little instruction.  As illustrating a period of transition in which heavy armoured troopers—­each one a human iron-clad fortress moving at speed and furnished with the most formidable portable artillery then known—­could overcome the resistance of almost any number of foot-soldiers in light marching gear and armed with the antiquated pike, the affair may be worthy of a moment’s attention; and for this improvement—­itself now as obsolete as the slings and cataphracts of Roman legions—­the world was indebted to Maurice.  But the shock of mighty armies, the manoeuvring of vast masses in one magnificent combination, by which the fate of empires, the happiness or the misery of the peoples for generations, may perhaps be decided in a few hours, undoubtedly require a higher constructive genius than could be displayed in any such hand-to-hand encounter as that of Turnhout, scientifically managed as it unquestionably was.  The true and abiding interest of the battle is derived from is moral effect, from its influence on the people of the Netherlands.  And this could scarcely be exaggerated.  The nation was electrified, transformed in an instant.  Who now should henceforth dare to say that one Spanish fighting-man was equal to five or ten Hollanders?  At last the days of Jemmingen and Mooker-heath needed no longer to be remembered by every patriot with a shudder of shame.  Here at least in the open field a Spanish army, after in vain refusing a combat and endeavouring to escape, had literally bitten the dust before one fourth of its own number.  And this effect was a permanent one.  Thenceforth for foreign powers to talk of mediation between the republic and the ancient master, to suggest schemes of reconciliation and of a return to obedience, was to offer gratuitous and trivial insult, and we shall very soon have occasion to mark the simple eloquence with which the thirty-eight Spanish standards of Turnhout, hung up in the old hall of the Hague, were made to reply to the pompous rhetoric of an interfering ambassador.

This brief episode was not immediately followed by other military events of importance in the provinces during what remained of the winter.  Very early in the spring, however, it was probable that the campaign might open simultaneously in France and on the frontiers of Flanders.  Of all the cities in the north of France there was none, after Rouen, so important, so populous, so wealthy as Amiens.  Situate in fertile fields, within three days march of Paris, with no intervening forests or other impediments of a physical nature to free communication, it was the key to the gates of the capital.  It had no garrison, for the population numbered fifteen thousand men able to bear arms, and the inhabitants valued themselves on the prowess of their trained militiamen, five thousand of whom they boasted to be able to bring into the field at an hour’s notice—­and they were perfectly loyal to Henry.