able Spinola was again
advancing upon them! It was perfectly true. With extraordinary
perseverance he had gathered up six or seven thousand infantry and twelve
companies of horse--all the remnants of the splendid armies with which he
had taken the field at midsummer--and was now marching to the relief of
Groll, besieged as it was by a force at least doubly as numerous as his
own. It was represented to the stadholder, however, that an impassable
morass lay between him and the enemy, and that there would therefore be
time enough to complete his entrenchments before Spinola could put his
foolhardy attempt into execution. But the Catholic general, marching
faster than rumour itself, had crossed the impracticable swamp almost
before a spadeful of earth had been turned in the republican camp. His
advance was in sight even while the incredulous were sneering at the
absurdity of his supposed project. Informed by scouts of the weakest
point in the stadholder's extended lines, Spinola was directing himself
thither with beautiful precision. Maurice hastily contracted both his
wings, and concentrated himself in the village of Lebel. At last the
moment had come for a decisive struggle. There could be little doubt of
the result. All the advantage was with the republican army. The Catholics
had arrived in front of the enemy fatigued by forced marches through
quagmires, in horrible weather, over roads deemed impassable. The States'
troops were fresh, posted on ground of their own choosing, and partially
entrenched. To the astonishment, even to the horror of the most eager
portion of the army, the stadholder deliberately, and despite the groans
of his soldiers, refused the combat, and gave immediate orders for
raising the siege and abandoning the field.

On the 12th of November he broke up his camp and withdrew to a village
called Zelem. On the same day the marquis, having relieved the city,
without paying the expected price, retired in another direction, and
established what was left of his army in the province of Munster. The
campaign was closed. And thus the great war which had run its stormy
course for nearly forty years, dribbled out of existence, sinking away
that rainy November in the dismal fens of Zutphen. The long struggle for
independence had come, almost unperceived, to an end.

Peace had not arrived, but the work of the armies was over for many a
long year. Freedom and independence were secured. A deed or two, never to
be