ion that
the Catholic general had sustained an overwhelming defeat at the close of
the campaign, with a loss of three thousand five hundred men.

The tale was implicitly believed by king and cabinet, so that when, very
soon afterwards, the couriers arrived bringing official accounts of the
victory gained over the veteran cavalry of the States in the very
presence of the stadholder, followed by the crowning triumph of
Wachtendonk, the demonstrations of joy were all the more vivacious in
consequence of the previous gloom. Spinola himself followed hard upon the
latest messengers, and was received with ovations. Never, since the days
of Alexander Farnese, had a general at the Spanish court been more
cordially caressed or hated. Had Philip the Prudent been still upon the
throne, he would have felt it his duty to make immediate arrangements for
poisoning him. Certainly his plans and his popularity would have been
undermined in the most artistic manner.

But Philip III., more dangerous to rabbits than to generals, left the
Genoese to settle the plans of his next campaign with Lerma and his
parasites.

The subtle Spinola, having, in his despatches, ascribed the chief merit
of the victories to Louis Velasco, a Spaniard, while his own original
conception of transferring the war to Friesland was attributed by him
with magnificent effrontery to Lerma and to the king--who were probably
quite ignorant of the existence of that remote province--succeeded in
maintaining his favourable position at court, and was allowed, by what
was called the war-council, to manage matters nearly at his pleasure.

It is difficult however to understand how so much clamour should have
been made over such paltry triumphs. All Europe rang with a cavalry fight
in which less than a thousand saddles on both sides had been emptied,
leading to no result, and with the capture of a couple of insignificant
towns, of which not one man in a thousand had ever heard.

Spinola had doubtless shown genius of a subtle and inventive order, and
his fortunate audacity in measuring himself, while a mere apprentice,
against the first military leader living had been crowned with wonderful
success. He had nailed the stadholder fast to the island of Cadzand,
while he was perfecting his arrangements and building boats on the Rhine;
he had propounded riddles which Maurice had spent three of the best
campaigning months in idle efforts to guess, and when he at last moved,
he had