Alva, in reply, expressed his confidence that four or five thousand choice troops of Spain would be enough to make a short war of it, but nevertheless warned his officers of the dangers of overweening confidence.  He had been informed that the rebels had assumed the red scarf of the Spanish uniform.  He hoped the stratagem would not save them from broken heads, but was unwilling that his Majesty’s badge should be altered.

He reiterated his commands that no enterprise should be undertaken, except by the whole army in concert; and enjoined the generals incontinently to hang and strangle all prisoners the moment they should be taken.

Marching directly northward, Meghem reached Coeverden, some fifty miles from Dam, on the night of the 22d.  He had informed Aremberg that he might expect him with his infantry and his light horse in the course of the next day.  On the following morning, the 23d, Aremberg wrote his last letter to the Duke, promising to send a good account of the beggars within a very few hours.

Louis of Nassau had broken up his camp at Dam about midnight.  Falling back, in a southerly direction, along the Wold-weg, or forest road, a narrow causeway through a swampy district, he had taken up a position some three leagues from his previous encampment.  Near the monastery of Heiliger Lee, or the “Holy Lion,” he had chosen his ground.  A little money in hand, ample promises, and the hopes of booty, had effectually terminated the mutiny, which had also broken out in his camp.  Assured that Meghem had not yet effected his junction with Aremberg, prepared to strike, at last, a telling blow for freedom and fatherland, Louis awaited the arrival of his eager foe.

His position was one of commanding strength and fortunate augury.  Heiliger Lee was a wooded eminence, artificially reared by Premonstrant monks.  It was the only rising ground in that vast extent of watery pastures, enclosed by the Ems and Lippe—­the “fallacious fields” described by Tacitus.  Here Hermann, first of Teutonic heroes, had dashed out of existence three veteran legions of tyrant Rome.  Here the spectre of Varus, begrimed and gory, had risen from the morass to warn Germanicus, who came to avenge him, that Gothic freedom was a dangerous antagonist.  And now, in the perpetual reproductions of history, another German warrior occupied a spot of vantage in that same perilous region.  The tyranny with which he contended strove to be as universal as that of Rome, and had stretched its wings of conquest into worlds of which the Caesars had never dreamed.  It was in arms, too, to crush not only the rights of man, but the rights of God.  The battle of freedom was to be fought not only for fatherland, but for conscience.  The cause was even holier than that which had inspired the arm of Hermann.

Although the swamps of that distant age had been transformed into fruitful pastures, yet the whole district was moist, deceitful, and dangerous.  The country was divided into squares, not by hedges but by impassable ditches.  Agricultural entrenchments had long made the country almost impregnable, while its defences against the ocean rendered almost as good service against a more implacable human foe.