s departure.

The English forces--reduced as they were by sickness, famine, and abject
poverty--were but a remnant of the brave and well-seasoned bands which
had faced the Spaniards with success on so many battle-fields.

The general who now assumed chief command over them--by direction of
Leicester, subsequently confirmed by the Queen--was Lord Willoughby. A
daring, splendid dragoon, an honest, chivalrous, and devoted servant of
his Queen, a conscientious adherent of Leicester, and a firm believer in
his capacity and character, he was, however, not a man of sufficient
experience or subtlety to perform the various tasks imposed upon him by
the necessities of such a situation. Quick-witted, even brilliant in
intellect, and the bravest of the brave on the battle-field, he was
neither a sagacious administrator nor a successful commander. And he
honestly confessed his deficiencies, and disliked the post to which he
had been elevated. He scorned baseness, intrigue, and petty quarrels, and
he was impatient of control. Testy, choleric, and quarrelsome, with a
high sense of honour, and a keen perception of insult, very modest and
very proud, he was not likely to feed with wholesome appetite upon the
unsavoury annoyances which were the daily bread of a chief commander in
the Netherlands. "I ambitiously affect not high titles, but round
dealing," he said; "desiring rather to be a private lance with
indifferent reputation, than a colonel-general spotted or defamed with
wants." He was not the politician to be matched against the unscrupulous
and all-accomplished Farnese; and indeed no man better than Willoughby
could illustrate the enormous disadvantage under which Englishmen
laboured at that epoch in their dealings with Italians and Spaniards. The
profuse indulgence in falsehood which characterized southern
statesmanship, was more than a match for English love of truth. English
soldiers and negotiators went naked into a contest with enemies armed in
a panoply of lies. It was an unequal match, as we have already seen, and
as we are soon more clearly to see. How was an English soldier who valued
his knightly word--how were English diplomatists--among whom one of the
most famous--then a lad of twenty, secretary to Lord Essex in the
Netherlands--had poetically avowed that "simple truth was highest
skill,"--to deal with the thronging Spanish deceits sent northward by the
great father of lies who sat in the Escorial?

"It were an ill