avalry had forced their way.
Here was a dilemma. Should Maurice look calmly on while the enemy, whom
he had made so painful a forced march to meet, moved off out of reach
before his eyes? Yet certainly this was no slight triumph in itself.
There sat the stadholder on his horse at the head of eight hundred
carabineers, and there marched four of Philip's best infantry regiments,
garnished with some of his most renowned cavalry squadrons, anxious not
to seek but to avoid a combat. First came the Germans of Count Sultz, the
musketeers in front, and the spearsmen, of which the bulk of this and of
all the regiments was composed, marching in closely serried squares, with
the company standards waving over each. Next, arranged in the same
manner, came the Walloon regiments of Hachicourt and of La Barlotte.
Fourth and last came the famous Neapolitans of Marquis Trevico. The
cavalry squadrons rode on the left of the infantry, and were commanded by
Nicolas Basta, a man who had been trampling upon the Netherlanders ever
since the days of Alva, with whom he had first come to the country.

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