e
been exposed while infants. In Christendom they would, six hundred years
earlier, have been sent to some quiet cloister. But their lot had fallen
on a time when men had discovered that the strength of the muscles is
far inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is probable that,
among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who were marshalled round
Neerwinden under all the standards of Western Europe, the two feeblest
in body were the hunchbacked dwarf who urged forward the fiery onset
of France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of
England.

The French were victorious; but they had bought their victory dear. More
than ten thousand of the best troops of Lewis had fallen. Neerwinden was
a spectacle at which the oldest soldiers stood aghast. The streets were
piled breast high with corpses. Among the slain were some great lords
and some renowned warriors. Montchevreuil was there, and the mutilated
trunk of the Duke of Uzes, first in order of precedence among the
whole aristocracy of France. Thence too Sarsfield was borne desperately
wounded to a pallet from which he never rose again. The Court of Saint
Germains had conferred on him the empty title of Earl of Lucan;
but history knows him by the name which is still dear to the most
unfortunate of nations. The region, renowned in history as the battle
field, during many ages, of the most warlike nations of Europe, has
seen only two more terrible days, the day of Malplaquet and the day of
Waterloo. During many months the ground was strewn with skulls and bones
of men and horses, and with fragments of hats and shoes, saddles and
holsters. The next summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousand
corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies. The traveller who, on the
road from Saint Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet
spreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying that the
figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished,
that the earth was disclosing her blood, and refusing to cover the
slain. [448]

There was no pursuit, though the sun was still high in the heaven when
William crossed the Gette. The conquerors were so much exhausted by
marching and fighting that they could scarcely move; and the horses were
in even worse condition than the men. Their general thought it necessary
to allow some time for rest and refreshment. The French nobles unloaded
their sumpter horses, supped gaily,