Willoughby, trusting to his captive's
word, galloped onward, and with him the rest of the little troop, till
they seemed swallowed up by the superior numbers of the enemy. His horse
was shot under him, his basses were torn from his legs, and he was nearly
taken a prisoner, but fought his way back with incredible strength and
good fortune. Sir William Stanley's horse had seven bullets in him, but
bore his rider unhurt to the end of the battle. Leicester declared Sir
William and "old Reads" to be "worth their, weight in pearl."

Hannibal Gonzaga, leader of the Spanish cavalry, fell mortally wounded a
The Marquis del Vasto, commander of the expedition, nearly met the same
fate. An Englishman was just cleaving his head with a battle-axe, when a
Spaniard transfixed the soldier with his pike. The most obstinate
struggle took place about the train of waggons. The teamsters had fled in
the beginning of the action, but the English and Spanish soldiers,
struggling with the horses, and pulling them forward and backward, tried
in vain to get exclusive possession of the convoy which was the cause of
the action. The carts at last forced their way slowly nearer and nearer
to the town, while the combat still went on, warm as ever, between the
hostile squadrons. The action, lasted an hour and a half, and again and
again the Spanish horsemen wavered and broke before the handful of
English, and fell back upon their musketeers. Sir Philip Sidney, in the
last charge, rode quite through the enemy's ranks till he came upon their
entrenchments, when a musket-ball from the camp struck him upon the
thigh, three inches above the knee. Although desperately wounded in a
part which should have been protected by the cuishes which he had thrown
aside, he was not inclined to leave the field; but his own horse had been
shot under him at the-beginning of the action, and the one upon which he
was now mounted became too restive for him, thus crippled, to control. He
turned reluctantly away, and rode a mile and a half back to the
entrenchments, suffering extreme pain, for his leg was dreadfully
shattered. As he past along the edge of the battle-field his attendants
brought him a bottle of water to quench his raging thirst. At, that
moment a wounded English soldier, "who had eaten his last at the same
feast," looked up wistfully, in his face, when Sidney instantly handed
him the flask, exclaiming, "Thy necessity is even greater than mine." He
then pledged his