fusing efforts, the army would be hopelessly lost.

Maurice, against the express advice of Vere, decided to send his cousin
Ernest, with the main portion of the force established on the right bank
of the harbour, in search of the archduke, for the purpose of holding him
in check long enough to enable the rest of the army to cross the water
when the tide should serve. The enemy, it was now clear, would advance by
precisely the path over which the States' army had marched that morning.
Ernest was accordingly instructed to move with the greatest expedition in
order to seize the bridge at Leffingen before the archduke should reach
the deep, dangerous, and marshy river, over which it was the sole passage
to the downs. Two thousand infantry, being the Scotch regiment of Edmonds
and the Zeelanders of Van der Noot, four squadrons of Dutch cavalry, and
two pieces of artillery composed the force with which Ernest set forth at
a little before dawn on his hazardous but heroic enterprise.

With a handful of troops he was to make head against an army, and the
youth accepted the task in the cheerful spirit of self-sacrifice which
characterized his house. Marching as rapidly as the difficult ground
would permit, he had the disappointment, on approaching the fatal point
at about eight o'clock, to see the bridge at Leffingen in the possession
of the enemy. Maurice had sent off a messenger early that morning with a
letter marked post haste (cito, cito) to Ostend ordering up some four
hundred cavalry-men then stationed in that city under Piron and Bruges,
to move up to the support of Ernest, and to destroy the bridge and dams
at Leffingen before the enemy should arrive. That letter, which might
have been so effective, was delivered, as it subsequently appeared,
exactly ten days after it was written. The States, of their own
authority, had endeavoured to send out those riders towards the scene of
action, but it was with great difficulty that they could be got into the
saddle at all, and they positively refused to go further than St. Albert
fort.

What course should he now pursue? He had been sent to cut the archduke's
road. He had failed. Had he remained in his original encampment his force
would have been annihilated by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy so
soon as they reached the right bank of Nieuport haven, while Maurice
could have only looked hopelessly on from the opposite shore. At least
nothing worse than absolute destruction c