h foul weather, but to allow him the
military honour of being last to break up camp. Should Maurice consent to
move away, Mondragon was ready to pledge himself not to pursue him, and
within three days to leave his own entrenchments.

The proposition was not granted, and very soon afterwards the Spaniard,
deciding to retire, crossed the Rhine on the 11th October. Maurice made a
slight attempt at pursuit, sending Count William Lewis with some cavalry,
who succeeded in cutting off a few wagons. The army, however, returned
safely, to be dispersed into various garrisons.

This was Mondragon's last feat of, arms. Less than three months
afterwards, in Antwerp citadel, as the veteran was washing his hands
previously to going to the dinner-table, he sat down and died. Strange to
say, this man--who had spent almost a century on the battlefield, who had
been a soldier in nearly every war that had been waged in any part of
Europe during that most belligerent age, who had come an old man to the
Netherlands before Alva's arrival, and had ever since been constantly and
personally engaged in the vast Flemish tragedy which had now lasted well
nigh thirty years--had never himself lost a drop of blood. His
battle-fields had been on land and water, on ice, in fire, and at the
bottom of the sea, but he had never received a wound. Nay, more; he had
been blown up in a fortress--the castle of Danvilliers in Luxembourg, of
which he was governor--where all perished save his wife and himself, and,
when they came to dig among the ruins, they excavated at last the ancient
couple, protected by the framework of a window in the embrasure of which
they had been seated, without a scratch or a bruise. He was a Biscayan by
descent, but born in Medina del Campo. A strict disciplinarian, very
resolute and pertinacious, he had the good fortune to be beloved by his
inferiors, his equals, and his superiors. He was called the father of his
soldiers, the good Mondragon, and his name was unstained by any of those
deeds of ferocity which make the chronicles of the time resemble rather
the history of wolves than of men. To a married daughter, mother of
several children, he left a considerable fortune.

Maurice broke up his camp soon after the departure of his antagonist, and
paused for a few days at Arnheim to give honourable burial to his cousin
Philip and Count Solms. Meantime Sir Francis Vere was detached, with
three regiments, which were to winter in Overyssel