arguard, consisting of Trevico's Neapolitan regiment, was assailed
by Du Bois, Donck, Rysoir, Marcellus Bax, and Sir Francis Vere. The
effect seemed almost supernatural. The Spanish cavalry--those far-famed
squadrons of Guzman and Basta--broke at the first onset and galloped off
for the pass as if they had been riding a race. Most of them escaped
through the hollow into the morass beyond. The musketeers of Sultz's
regiment hardly fired a shot, and fell back in confusion upon the thickly
clustered pikemen. The assailants, every one of them in complete armour,
on powerful horses, and armed not with lances but with carbines, trampled
over the panic-struck and struggling masses of leather jerkined pikemen
and shot them at arm's length. The charge upon Trevico's men at the same
moment was just as decisive. In less time than it took afterwards to
describe the scene, those renowned veterans were broken into a helpless
mass of dying, wounded, or fugitive creatures, incapable of striking a
blow.

Thus the Germans in the front and the Neapolitans in the rear had been
simultaneously shattered, and rolled together upon the two other
regiments, those of Hachicourt and La Barlotte, which were placed between
them. Nor did these troops offer any better resistance, but were
paralysed and hurled out of existence like the rest. In less than an hour
the Spanish army was demolished. Varax himself lay dead upon the field,
too fortunate not to survive his disgrace. It was hardly more than
daylight on that dull January morning; nine o'clock had scarce chimed
from the old brick steeples of Turnhout, yet two thousand Spaniards had
fallen before the blows of eight hundred Netherlanders, and there were
five hundred prisoners beside. Of Maurice's army not more than nine or
ten were slain. The story sounds like a wild legend. It was as if the arm
of each Netherlander had been nerved by the memory of fifty years of
outrage, as if the spectre of their half-century of crime had appalled
the soul of every Spaniard. Like a thunderbolt the son of William the
Silent smote that army of Philip, and in an instant it lay blasted on the
heath of Tiel. At least it could hardly be called sagacious generalship
on the part of the stadholder. The chances were all against him, and if
instead of Varax those legions had been commanded that morning by old
Christopher Mondragon, there might perhaps have been another tale to
tell. Even as it was, there had been a supreme m