e ready to embark. It would be unjust to compare the dimensions of
this force and the preparations for ensuring the success of the
enterprise with the vast expeditions and gigantic armaments of later
times, especially with the tremendous exhibitions of military and naval
energy with which our own civil war has made us familiar. Maurice was an
adept in all that science and art had as yet bequeathed to humanity for
the purpose of human' destruction, but the number of his troops was small
compared to the mighty hosts which the world since those days has seen
embattled. War, as a trade, was then less easily learned. It was a guild
in which apprenticeship was difficult, and in which enrolment was usually
for life. A little republic of scarce three million souls, which could
keep always on foot a regular well-appointed army of twenty-five thousand
men and a navy of one or two hundred heavily armed cruisers, was both a
marvel and a formidable element in the general polity of the world. The
lesson to be derived both in military and political philosophy from the
famous campaign of Nieuport does not depend for its value on the numbers
of the ships or soldiers engaged in the undertaking. Otherwise, and had
it been merely a military expedition like a thousand others which have
been made and forgotten, it would not now deserve more than a momentary
attention. But the circumstances were such as to make the issue of the
impending battle one of the most important in human history. It was
entirely possible that an overwhelming defeat of the republican forces on
this foreign expedition would bring with it an absolute destruction of
the republic, and place Spain once more in possession of the heretic
"islands," from which basis she would menace the very existence of
England more seriously than she had ever done before. Who could measure
the consequences to Christendom of such a catastrophe?

The distance from the place where the fleet and army were assembled to
Nieuport--the objective point of the enterprise--was but thirty-five
miles as the crow flies. And the crow can scarcely fly in a straighter
line than that described by the coast along which the ships were to shape
their course.

And here it is again impossible not to reflect upon the change which
physical science has brought over the conduct of human affairs. We have
seen in a former chapter a most important embassy sent forth from the
States for the purpose of preventing the consu