reat master of dissimulation; Alexander Farnese; were at the same time
unbound by their comrades, and rescued from the fate intended for them.

Notwithstanding the probability--when the portcullis fell--that the whole
party, had been deceived by an artifice of war the adventurers, who had
come so far, refused to abandon the enterprise, and continued an
impatient battery upon the gate. At last it was swung wide open, and a
furious onslaught was made by the garrison upon the Spaniards. There
was--a fierce brief struggle, and then the assailants were utterly
routed. Some were killed under the walls, while the rest were hunted into
the waves. Nearly every one of the expedition (a thousand in number)
perished.

It had now become obvious to the Duke that his siege must be raised. The
days were gone when the walls of Dutch towns seemed to melt before the
first scornful glance of the Spanish invader; and when a summons meant a
surrender, and a surrender a massacre. Now, strong in the feeling of
independence, and supported by the courage and endurance of their English
allies, the Hollanders had learned to humble the pride of Spain as it had
never been humbled before. The hero of a hundred battle-fields, the
inventive and brilliant conqueror of Antwerp, seemed in the deplorable
issue of the English invasion to have lost all his genius, all his
fortune. A cloud had fallen upon his fame, and he now saw himself; at the
head of the best army in Europe, compelled to retire, defeated and
humiliated, from the walls of Bergen. Winter was coming on apace; the
country was flooded; the storms in that-bleak region and inclement season
were incessant; and he was obliged to retreat before his army should be
drowned.

On the night of 12-13 November he set fire to his camp; and took his
departure. By daybreak he was descried in full retreat, and was hotly
pursued by the English and Dutch from the city, who drove the great
Alexander and his legions before them in ignominious flight. Lord
Willoughby, in full view of the retiring enemy, indulged the allied
forces with a chivalrous spectacle. Calling a halt, after it had become
obviously useless, with their small force of cavalry; to follow any
longer, through a flooded country, an enemy who had abandoned his design,
he solemnly conferred the honour of knighthood, in the name of Queen
Elizabeth, on the officers who had most distinguished themselves during
the siege, Francis Vere, Baskerville, Powe