It was the doom of this high-born, true-hearted dame to be called upon to weep oftener for her children than is the usual lot of mothers.  Count Adolphus had already perished in his youth on the field of Heiliger Lee, and now Louis and his young brother Henry, who had scarcely attained his twenty-sixth year, and whose short life had been passed in that faithful service to the cause of freedom which was the instinct of his race, had both found a bloody and an unknown grave.  Count John, who had already done so much for the cause, was fortunately spared to do much more.  Although of the expedition, and expecting to participate in the battle, he had, at the urgent solicitation of all the leaders, left the army for a brief, season, in order to obtain at Cologne a supply of money, for the mutinous troops:  He had started upon this mission two days before the action in which he, too, would otherwise have been sacrificed.  The young Duke Christopher, “optimm indolis et magnee spei adolescens,” who had perished on the same field, was sincerely mourned by the lovers of freedom.  His father, the Elector, found his consolation in the Scriptures, and in the reflection that his son had died in the bed of honor, fighting for the cause of God. “’T was better thus,” said that stern Calvinist, whose dearest wish was to “Calvinize the world,” than to have passed his time in idleness, “which is the Devil’s pillow.”

Vague rumors of the catastrophe had spread far and wide.  It was soon certain that Louis had been defeated, but, for a long time, conflicting reports were in circulation as to the fate of the leaders.  The Prince of Orange, meanwhile, passed days of intense anxiety, expecting hourly to hear from his brothers, listening to dark rumors, which he refused to credit and could not contradict, and writing letters, day after day, long after the eyes which should have read the friendly missives were closed.

The victory of the King’s army at Mookerheyde had been rendered comparatively barren by the mutiny which broke forth the day after the battle.  Three years’ pay were due to the Spanish troops, and it was not surprising that upon this occasion one of those periodic rebellions should break forth, by which the royal cause was frequently so much weakened, and the royal governors so intolerably perplexed.  These mutinies were of almost regular occurrence, and attended by as regular a series of phenomena.  The Spanish troops, living so far from their own country, but surrounded by their women, and constantly increasing swarms of children, constituted a locomotive city of considerable population, permanently established on a foreign soil.  It was a city walled in by bayonets, and still further isolated from the people around by the impassable moat of mutual hatred.  It was a city obeying the articles of war, governed by despotic authority, and yet occasionally revealing, in full force, the irrepressible democratic element.  At periods which could almost be calculated, the