a hill of moderate elevation, before him an extensive and swampy field.  In the front of the field was a causeway leading to the abbey.  This was the road which Aremberg was to traverse.  On the plain which lay between the wood and the hill, the main body of the beggars were drawn up.  They were disposed in two squares or squadrons, rather deep than wide, giving the idea of a less number than they actually contained.  The lesser square, in which were two thousand eight hundred men, was partially sheltered by the hill.  Both were flanked by musketeers.  On the brow of the hill was a large body of light armed troops, the ‘enfans perdus’ of the army.  The cavalry, amounting to not more than three hundred men, was placed in front, facing the road along which Aremberg was to arrive.

That road was bordered by a wood extending nearly to the front of the hill.  As Aremberg reached its verge, he brought out his artillery, and opened a fire upon the body of light troops.  The hill protected a large part of the enemy’s body from this attack.  Finding the rebels so strong in numbers and position, Aremberg was disposed only to skirmish.  He knew better than did his soldiers the treacherous nature of the ground in front of the enemy.  He saw that it was one of those districts where peat had been taken out in large squares for fuel, and where a fallacious and verdant scum upon the surface of deep pools simulated the turf that had been removed.  He saw that the battle-ground presented to him by his sagacious enemy was one great sweep of traps and pitfalls.  Before he could carry the position, many men must necessarily be engulfed.

He paused for an instant.  He was deficient in cavalry, having only Martinengo’s troop, hardly amounting to four hundred men.  He was sure of Meghem’s arrival within twenty-four hours.  If, then, he could keep the rebels in check, without allowing them any opportunity to disperse, he should be able, on the morrow, to cut them to pieces, according to the plan agreed upon a fortnight before.  But the Count had to contend with a double obstacle.  His soldiers were very hot, his enemy very cool.  The Spaniards, who had so easily driven a thousand musketeers from behind their windmill, the evening before, who had seen the whole rebel force decamp in hot haste on the very night of their arrival before Dam, supposed themselves in full career of victory.  Believing that the name alone of the old legions had stricken terror to the hearts of the beggars, and that no resistance was possible to Spanish arms, they reviled their general for his caution.  His reason for delay was theirs for hurry.  Why should Meghem’s loitering and mutinous troops, arriving at the eleventh hour, share in the triumph and the spoil?  No man knew the country better than Aremberg, a native of the Netherlands, the stadholder of the province.  Cowardly or heretical motives alone could sway him, if he now held them back in the very hour of victory.  Inflamed beyond endurance by these taunts, feeling his pride of country touched to the quick, and willing to show that a Netherlander would lead wherever Spaniards dared to follow, Aremberg allowed himself to commit the grave error for which he was so deeply to atone.  Disregarding the dictates of his own experience and the arrangements of his superior, he yielded to the braggart humor of his soldiers, which he had not, like Alva, learned to moderate or to despise.