of foot-soldiers in light marching gear and armed with the
antiquated pike, the affair may be worthy of a moment's attention; and
for this improvement--itself now as obsolete as the slings and
cataphracts of Roman legions--the world was indebted to Maurice. But the
shock of mighty armies, the manoeuvring of vast masses in one magnificent
combination, by which the fate of empires, the happiness or the misery of
the peoples for generations, may perhaps be decided in a few hours,
undoubtedly require a higher constructive genius than could be displayed
in any such hand-to-hand encounter as that of Turnhout, scientifically
managed as it unquestionably was. The true and abiding interest of the
battle is derived from is moral effect, from its influence on the people
of the Netherlands. And this could scarcely be exaggerated. The nation
was electrified, transformed in an instant. Who now should henceforth
dare to say that one Spanish fighting-man was equal to five or ten
Hollanders? At last the days of Jemmingen and Mooker-heath needed no
longer to be remembered by every patriot with a shudder of shame. Here at
least in the open field a Spanish army, after in vain refusing a combat
and endeavouring to escape, had literally bitten the dust before one
fourth of its own number. And this effect was a permanent one.
Thenceforth for foreign powers to talk of mediation between the republic
and the ancient master, to suggest schemes of reconciliation and of a
return to obedience, was to offer gratuitous and trivial insult, and we
shall very soon have occasion to mark the simple eloquence with which the
thirty-eight Spanish standards of Turnhout, hung up in the old hall of
the Hague, were made to reply to the pompous rhetoric of an interfering
ambassador.

This brief episode was not immediately followed by other military events
of importance in the provinces during what remained of the winter. Very
early in the spring, however, it was probable that the campaign might
open simultaneously in France and on the frontiers of Flanders. Of all
the cities in the north of France there was none, after Rouen, so
important, so populous, so wealthy as Amiens. Situate in fertile fields,
within three days march of Paris, with no intervening forests or other
impediments of a physical nature to free communication, it was the key to
the gates of the capital. It had no garrison, for the population numbered
fifteen thousand men able to bear arms, and the in