in a mass, he besought Prince Maurice to order him to charge.  The stadholder bade him pause yet a little longer.  The aspect of the infantry fight was not yet, in his opinion, sufficiently favourable.  Again and again Lewis sent fresh entreaties, and at last received the desired permission.  Placing three picked squadrons in front, the young general made a furious assault upon the Catholic cavalry, which had again rallied and was drawn up very close to the musketeers.  Fortune was not so kind to him as at the earlier stage of the combat.  The charge was received with dauntless front by the Spanish and Italian horse, while at the same moment the infantry poured a severe fire into their assailants.  The advancing squadrons faltered, wheeled back upon the companies following them, and the whole mass of the republican cavalry broke into wild and disorderly retreat.  At the same moment the archduke, observing his advantage, threw in his last reserves of infantry, and again there was a desperate charge upon Vere’s wearied troops, as decisive as the counter charge of Lewis’s cavalry had been unsuccessful.  The English and Frisians, sorely tried during those hours of fighting with superior numbers in the intolerable heat, broke at last and turned their backs upon the foe.  Some of them fled panic-stricken quite across the downs and threw themselves into the sea, but the mass retreated in a comparatively orderly manner, being driven from one down to another, and seeking a last refuge behind the battery placed on the high-water line of the beach.  In the confusion and panic Sir Francis Vere went down at last.  His horse, killed by a stray shot fell with and upon him, and the heroic Englishman would then and there have finished his career—­for he would hardly have found quarter from the Spaniards—­ had not Sir Robert Drury, riding by in the tumult, observed him as he lay almost exhausted in the sand.  By his exertion and that of his servant Higham, Vere was rescued from his perilous situation, placed on the crupper of Sir Robert’s horse, and so borne off the field.

The current of the retreating and pursuing hosts swept by the spot where Maurice sat on horseback, watching and directing the battle.  His bravest and best general, the veteran Vere, had fallen; his cousin Lewis was now as utterly overthrown as his brother Ernest had been but a few hours before at the fatal bridge of Leffingen; the whole army, the only army, of the States was defeated, broken, panic-struck; the Spanish shouts of victory rang on every side.  Plainly the day was lost, and with it the republic.  In the blackest hour that the Netherland commonwealth had ever known, the fortitude of the stadholder did not desert him.  Immoveable as a rock in the torrent he stemmed the flight of his troops.  Three squadrons of reserved cavalry, Balen’s own, Vere’s own, and Cecil’s, were all that was left him, and at the head of these he essayed an advance.  He seemed the only man on the field