Then, with a few words of encouragement, he launched them at the foe.  The violent and entirely unexpected shock was even more successful than the Prince had anticipated.  The hostile cavalry reeled and fell into hopeless confusion, Egmont in vain striving to rally them to resistance.  That name had lost its magic.  Goignies also attempted, without success, to restore order among the panic-struck ranks.  The sudden conception of Parma, executed as suddenly and in so brilliant a manner, had been decisive.  Assaulted in flank and rear at the same moment, and already in temporary confusion, the cavalry of the enemy turned their backs and fled.  The centre of the states’ army thus left exposed, was now warmly attacked by Parma.  It had, moreover, been already thrown into disorder by the retreat of its own horse, as they charged through them in rapid and disgraceful panic.  The whole army bloke to pieces at once, and so great was the trepidation, that the conquered troops had hardly courage to run away.  They were utterly incapable of combat.  Not a blow was struck by the fugitives.  Hardly a man in the Spanish ranks was wounded; while, in the course of an hour and a half, the whole force of the enemy was exterminated.  It is impossible to state with accuracy the exact numbers slain.  Some accounts spoke of ten thousand killed, or captive, with absolutely no loss on the royal side.  Moreover, this slaughter was effected, not by the army under Don John, but by so small a fragment of it, that some historians have even set down the whole number of royalists engaged at the commencement of the action, at six hundred, increased afterwards to twelve hundred.  By this calculation, each Spaniard engaged must have killed ten enemies with his own hand; and that within an hour and a half’s space!  Other historians more wisely omit the exact statistics of the massacre, and allow that a very few—­ten or eleven, at most—­were slain within the Spanish ranks.  This, however, is the utmost that is claimed by even the Netherland historians, and it is, at any rate, certain that the whole states’ army was annihilated.

Rarely had a more brilliant exploit been performed by a handful of cavalry.  To the distinguished Alexander of Parma, who improvised so striking and complete a victory out of a fortuitous circumstance, belonged the whole credit of the day, for his quick eye detected a passing weakness of the enemy, and turned it to terrible account with the promptness which comes from genius alone.  A whole army was overthrown.  Everything belonging to the enemy fell into the hands of the Spaniards.  Thirty-four standards, many field-pieces, much camp equipage, and ammunition, besides some seven or eight thousand dead bodies, and six hundred living prisoners, were the spoils of that winter’s day.  Of the captives, some were soon afterwards hurled off the bridge at Namur, and drowned like dogs in the Meuse, while the rest were all hanged, none escaping with life.  Don John’s clemency was not superior to that of his sanguinary predecessors.