arquebusmen, swordmen, charged, sabred, or shot each other from
the various hollows or heights of vantage, plunging knee-deep in the
sand, torn and impeded by the prickly broom-plant which grew profusely
over the whole surface, and fighting breast to breast and hand to hand in
a vast series of individual encounters. Thrice were the Spaniards
repulsed in what for a moment seemed absolute rout, thrice they rallied
and drove their assailants at push of pike far beyond their original
position; and again the conquered republicans recovered their energy and
smote their adversaries as if the contest were just begun. The tide of
battle ebbed and flowed like the waves of the sea, but it would be mere
pedantry to affect any technical explanation of its various changes. It
was a hot struggle of twenty thousand men, pent up in a narrow space,
where the very nature of the ground had made artistic evolutions nearly
impracticable. The advance, the battalia, even the rearguard on both
sides were mixed together pell-mell, and the downs were soon covered at
every step with the dead and dying-Briton, Hollander, Spaniard, Italian,
Frisian, Frenchman, Walloon, fighting and falling together, and hotly
contesting every inch of those barren sands.

It seemed, said one who fought there, as if the last day of the world had
come.

Political and religious hatred, pride of race, remembrance of a
half-century of wrongs, hope, fury, and despair; these were the real
elements contending with each other that summer's day. It was a mere
trial of ferocity and endurance, not more scientific than a fight between
packs of wolves and of bloodhounds.

No doubt the brunt of the conflict fell upon Vere, with his Englishmen
and Frisians, for this advance-guard made up nearly one-half of the
States' army actually engaged. And most nobly, indefatigably, did the
hardy veteran discharge his duty. Having personally superintended almost
all the arrangements in the morning, he fought all day in the front,
doing the work both of a field-marshal and a corporal.

He was twice wounded, shot each time through the same leg, yet still
fought on as if it were some one else's blood and not his own that was
flowing from "those four holes in his flesh." He complained that he was
not sufficiently seconded, and that the reserves were not brought up
rapidly enough to his support. He was manifestly unjust, for although it
could not be doubted that the English and the Frisians did