ute failure, but the stadholder had gained a
great victory. The effect produced at home and abroad by this triumphant
measuring of the republican forces, horse, foot, and artillery, in a
pitched battle and on so conspicuous an arena, with the picked veterans
of Spain and Italy, was perhaps worth the cost, but no other benefit was
derived from the invasion of Flanders.

The most healthy moral to be drawn from this brief but memorable campaign
is that the wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war,
success in which seems to require a special education and a distinct
genius. Alternation between hope and despair, between culpable audacity
and exaggerated prudence, are but too apt to mark the warlike counsels of
politicians who have not been bred soldiers. This, at least, had been
eminently the case with Barneveld and his colleagues of the
States-General.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains
Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence
The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war

HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, Volume 74, 1600-1602

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Effects of the Nieuport campaign--The general and the statesman--
The Roman empire and the Turk--Disgraceful proceedings of the
mutinous soldiers in Hungary--The Dunkirk pirates--Siege of Ostend
by the Archduke--Attack on Rheinberg by Prince Maurice--Siege and
capitulation of Meura--Attempt on Bois-le-Duc--Concentration of the
war at Ostend--Account of the belligerents--Details of the siege--
Feigned offer of Sir Francis Vere to capitulate--Arrival of
reinforcements from the States--Attack and overthrow of the
besiegers.

The Nieuport campaign had exhausted for the time both belligerents. The
victor had saved the republic from impending annihilation, but was
incapable of further efforts during the summer. The conquered
cardinal-archduke, remaining essentially in the same position as before,
consoled himself with the agreeable fiction that the States,
notwithstanding their triumph, had in reality suffered the most in the
great battle. Meantime both parties did their best to repair damages and
to recruit their armies.

The States--or in other words Barneveld, who was the States--had learned
a lesson. Time