apolitans of Marquis Trevico. The
cavalry squadrons rode on the left of the infantry, and were commanded by
Nicolas Basta, a man who had been trampling upon the Netherlanders ever
since the days of Alva, with whom he had first come to the country.

And these were the legions--these very men or their immediate
predecessors--these Italians, Spaniards, Germans, and Walloons, who
during so many terrible years had stormed and sacked almost every city of
the Netherlands, and swept over the whole breadth of those little
provinces as with the besom of destruction.

Both infantry and cavalry, that picked little army of Varax was of the
very best that had shared in the devil's work which had been the chief
industry practised for so long in the obedient Netherlands. Was it not
madness for the stadholder, at the head of eight hundred horsemen, to
assail such an army as this? Was it not to invoke upon his head the swift
vengeance of Heaven? Nevertheless, the painstaking, cautious Maurice did
not hesitate. He ordered Hohenlo, with all the Brabantine cavalry, to
ride as rapidly as their horses could carry them along the edge of the
plain, and behind the tangled woodland, by which the movement would be
concealed. He was at all hazards to intercept the enemy's vanguard before
it should reach the fatal pass. Vere and Marcellus Bax meanwhile,
supported now by Edmont with the Nymegen squadrons, were to threaten the
Spanish rear. A company of two under Laurentz was kept by Maurice near
his person in reserve.

The Spaniards steadily continued their march, but as they became aware of
certain slight and indefinite movements on their left, their cavalry,
changing their position, were transferred from the right to the left of
the line of march, and now rode between the infantry and the belt of
woods.

In a few minutes after the orders given to Hohenlo, that dashing soldier
had circumvented the Spaniards, and emerged upon the plain between them
and the entrance to the defile, The next instant the trumpets sounded a
charge, and Hohenlo fell upon the foremost regiment, that of Sultz, while
the rearguard, 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
throug