The patriot leader had accomplished, after all, but a barren victory.  He had, to be sure, destroyed a number of Spaniards, amounting, according to the different estimates, from five hundred to sixteen hundred men.  He had also broken up a small but veteran army.  More than all, he had taught the Netherlanders, by this triumphant termination to a stricken field, that the choice troops of Spain were not invincible.  But the moral effect of the victory was the only permanent one.  The Count’s badly paid troops could with difficulty be kept together.  He had no sufficient artillery to reduce the city whose possession would have proved so important to the cause.  Moreover, in common with the Prince of Orange and all his brethren, he had been called to mourn for the young and chivalrous Adolphus, whose life-blood had stained the laurels of this first patriot victory.  Having remained, and thus wasted the normal three days upon the battle-field, Louis now sat down before Groningen, fortifying and entrenching himself in a camp within cannonshot of the city.

On the 23rd we have seen that Aremberg had written, full of confidence, to the Governor-general, promising soon to send him good news of the beggars.  On the 26th, Count Meghem wrote that, having spoken with a man who had helped to place Aremberg in his coffin, he could hardly entertain any farther doubt as to his fate.

The wrath of the Duke was even greater than his surprise.  Like Augustus, he called in vain on the dead commander for his legions, but prepared himself to inflict a more rapid and more terrible vengeance than the Roman’s.  Recognizing the gravity of his situation, he determined to take the field in person, and to annihilate this insolent chieftain who had dared not only to cope with, but to conquer his veteran regiments.  But before he could turn his back upon Brussels, many deeds were to be done.  His measures now followed each other in breathless succession, fulminating and blasting at every stroke.  On the 28th May, he issued an edict, banishing, on pain of death, the Prince of Orange, Louis Nassau, Hoogstraaten, Van den Berg, and others, with confiscation of all their property.  At the same time he razed the Culemburg Palace to the ground, and erected a pillar upon its ruins, commemorating the accursed conspiracy which had been engendered within its walls.  On the 1st June, eighteen prisoners of distinction, including the two barons Batenburg, Maximilian Kock, Blois de Treslong and others, were executed upon the Horse Market, in Brussels.  In the vigorous language of Hoogstraaten, this horrible tragedy was enacted directly before the windows of that “cruel animal, Noircarmes,” who, in company of his friend, Berlaymont, and the rest of the Blood-Council, looked out upon the shocking spectacle.  The heads of the victims were exposed upon stakes, to which also their bodies were fastened.  Eleven of these victims were afterward deposited, uncoffined, in unconsecrated ground; the other seven