, towards Weerd castle,
situate at a league's distance from Ysselsburg, and defended by a
garrison of twenty-six men under Captain Pruys. That doughty commandant,
on being summoned to surrender, obstinately refused. Vere, according to
Maurice's orders, then opened with his artillery against the place, which
soon capitulated in great panic and confusion. The captain demanded the
honours of war. Vere told him in reply that the honours of war were
halters for the garrison who had dared to defend such a hovel against
artillery. The twenty-six were accordingly ordered to draw black and
white straws. This was done, and the twelve drawing white straws were
immediately hanged; the thirteenth receiving his life on consenting to
act as executioner for his comrades. The commandant was despatched first
of all. The rope broke, but the English soldiers held him under the water
of the ditch until he was drowned. The castle was then thoroughly sacked,
the women being sent unharmed to Ysselsburg.

Maurice then shipped the remainder of his troops along the Rhine and Waal
to their winter quarters and returned to the Hague. It was the feeblest
year's work yet done by the stadholder.

Meantime his great ally, the Huguenot-Catholic Prince of Bearne, was
making a dashing, and, on the whole, successful campaign in the heart of
his own kingdom. The constable of Castile, Don Ferdinando de Velasco, one
of Spain's richest grandees and poorest generals, had been sent with an
army of ten thousand men to take the field in Burgundy against the man
with whom the great Farnese had been measuring swords so lately, and with
not unmingled success, in Picardy. Biron, with a sudden sweep, took
possession of Aussone, Autun, and Beaune, but on one adventurous day
found himself so deeply engaged with a superior force of the enemy in the
neighbourhood of Fontaine Francaise, or St. Seine, where France's great
river takes its rise, as to be nearly cut off and captured. But Henry
himself was already in the field, and by one of those mad, reckless
impulses which made him so adorable as a soldier and yet so profoundly
censurable as a commander-in-chief, he flung himself, like a young
lieutenant, with a mere handful of cavalry, into the midst of the fight,
and at the imminent peril of his own life succeeded in rescuing the
marshal and getting off again unscathed. On other occasions Henry said he
had fought for victory, but on that for dear life; and, even as in the
f