for the intercession of his friends and countrymen.  The rout was sudden and absolute.  The foolhardiness of the Spaniards had precipitated them into the pit which their enemies had dug.  The day, was lost.  Nothing was left for Aremberg but to perish with honor.  Placing himself at the head of his handful of cavalry, he dashed into the melee.  The shock was sustained by young Adolphus of Nassau, at the head of an equal number of riders.  Each leader singled out the other.  They met as “captains of might” should do, in the very midst of the affray.  Aremberg, receiving and disregarding a pistol shot from his adversary, laid Adolphus dead at his feet, with a bullet through his body and a sabre cut on his head.  Two troopers in immediate attendance upon the young Count shared the same fate from the same hand.  Shortly afterward, the horse of Aremberg, wounded by a musket ball, fell to the ground.  A few devoted followers lifted the charger to his legs and the bleeding rider to his saddle.  They endeavored to bear their wounded general from the scene of action.  The horse staggered a few paces and fell dead.  Aremberg disengaged himself from his body, and walked a few paces to the edge of a meadow near the road.  Here, wounded in the action, crippled by the disease which had so long tormented him, and scarcely able to sustain longer the burthen of his armor, he calmly awaited his fate.  A troop of the enemy advanced soon afterwards, and Aremberg fell, covered with wounds, fighting like a hero of Homer, single-handed, against a battalion, with a courage worthy a better cause and a better fate.  The sword by which he received his final death-blow was that of the Seigneur do Haultain.  That officer having just seen his brother slain before his eyes, forgot the respect due to unsuccessful chivalry.

The battle was scarcely finished when an advancing trumpet was heard.  The sound caused the victors to pause in their pursuit, and enabled a remnant of the conquered Spaniards to escape.  Meghem’s force was thought to be advancing.  That general had indeed arrived, but he was alone.  He had reached Zuidlaren, a village some four leagues from the scene of action, on the noon of that day.  Here he had found a letter from Aremberg, requesting him to hasten.  He had done so.  His troops, however, having come from Coevorden that morning, were unable to accomplish so long a march in addition.  The Count, accompanied by a few attendants, reached the neighborhood of Heiliger Lee only in time to meet with some of the camp sutlers and other fugitives, from whom he learned the disastrous news of the defeat.  Finding that all was lost, he very properly returned to Zuidlaren, from which place he made the best of his way to Groningen.  That important city, the key of Friesland, he was thus enabled to secure.  The troops which he brought, in addition to the four German vanderas of Schaumburg, already quartered there, were sufficient to protect it against the ill-equipped army of Louis Nassau.