own countrymen. Yet there is no doubt whatever that De
Rosnes was as bitter an enemy to his own country as the most ferocious
Spaniard of them all. It has rarely been found in civil war that the man
who draws his sword against his fatherland, under the banner of the
foreigner, is actuated by any lingering tenderness for the nation he
betrays; and the renegade Frenchman was in truth the animating spirit of
Fuentes during the whole of his brilliant campaign. The Spaniard's
victories were, indeed, mainly attributable to the experience, the
genius, and the rancour of De Rosnes.

But debates over a lost battle are apt to be barren. Meantime Fuentes,
losing no time in controversy, advanced upon the city of Dourlens, was
repulsed twice, and carried it on the third assault, exactly one week
after the action just recounted. The Spaniards and Leaguers, howling
"Remember Ham!" butchered without mercy the garrison and all the
citizens, save a small number of prisoners likely to be lucrative. Six
hundred of the townspeople and two thousand five hundred French soldiers
were killed within a few hours. Well had Fuentes profited by the
relationship and tuition of Alva!

The Count of Dinant and his brother De Ronsoy were both slain, and two or
three hundred thousand florins were paid in ransom by those who escaped
with life. The victims were all buried outside of the town in one vast
trench, and the effluvia bred a fever which carried off most of the
surviving inhabitants. Dourlens became for the time a desert.

Fuentes now received deputies with congratulations from the obedient
provinces, especially from Hainault, Artois, and Lille. He was also
strongly urged to attempt the immediate reduction of Cambray, to which
end those envoys were empowered to offer contributions of four hundred
and fifty thousand florins and a contingent of seven thousand infantry.
Berlaymont, too, bishop of Tournay and archbishop of Cambray, was ready
to advance forty thousand florins in the same cause.

Fuentes, in the highest possible spirits at his success, and having just
been reinforced by Count Bucquoy with a fresh Walloon regiment of fifteen
hundred foot and with eight hundred and fifty of the mutineers from
Tirlemont and Chapelle, who were among the choicest of Spanish veterans,
was not disposed to let the grass grow under his feet. Within four days
after the sack of Dourlens he broke up his camp, and came before Cambray
with an army of twelve thousa