r
bands, established their quarters in different places, chose their
Elettos and lesser officers, and enacted the scenes which have been so
often depicted in these pages. The splendid army of Spinola melted like
April snow. By the last week of October there hardly seemed a Catholic
army in the field. The commander-in-chief had scattered such companies as
could still be relied upon in the villages of the friendly
arch-episcopate of Cologne, and had obtained, not by murders and
blackmail--according to the recent practice of the Admiral of Arragon, at
whose grim name the whole country-side still shuddered--but from the
friendship of the leading inhabitants and by honest loans, a sufficient
sum to put bread into the mouths of the troops still remaining faithful
to him.

The opportunity had at last arrived for the stadholder to strike a blow
before the season closed. Bankruptcy and mutiny had reduced his enemy to
impotence in the very season of his greatest probable success. On the
24th October Maurice came before Lochem, which he recaptured in five
days. Next in the order of Spinola's victories was Groll, which the
stadholder at once besieged. He had almost fifteen thousand infantry and
three thousand horse. A career of brief triumph before winter should
close in upon those damping fields, seemed now assured. But the rain,
which during nearly the whole campaign had been his potent ally, had of
late been playing him false. The swollen Yssel, during a brief period of
dry weather, had sunk so low in certain shallows as not to be navigable
for his transports, and after his trains of artillery and munitions had
been dragged wearily overland as far as Groll, the deluge had returned in
such force, that physical necessity as well as considerations of humanity
compelled him to defer his entrenching operations until the weather
should moderate. As there seemed no further danger to be apprehended from
the broken, mutinous, and dispersed forces of the enemy, the siege
operations were conducted in a leisurely manner. What was the
astonishment, therefore, among the soldiers, when a rumour flew about the
camp in the early days of November that the indomitable Spinola was again
advancing upon them! It was perfectly true. With extraordinary
perseverance he had gathered up six or seven thousand infantry and twelve
companies of horse--all the remnants of the splendid armies with which he
had taken the field at midsummer--and was now marching