the cavalry in one mass should then make a concentrated charge in front.  It seemed certain that the effect of this movement would be to hurl the whole of the enemy’s advance, horse and foot, back upon his battalia, and thus to break up his army in irretrievable rout.  The plan was a sensible one, but it was not ingeniously executed.  Before the handful of cavalry had time to make the proposed feint the cannoneers, being unduly excited, and by express command of Sir Francis Vere, fired a volley into the advancing columns of the archduke.  This precipitated the action; almost in an instant changed its whole character, and defeated the original plan of the republican leader.  The enemy’s cavalry broke at the first discharge from the battery, and wheeled in considerable disorder, but without panic, quite into and across the downs.  The whole army of the archduke, which had already been veering in the same direction, as it advanced, both because the tide was so steadily devouring the even surface of the sands, and because the position of a large portion of the States’ forces among the hillocks exposed him to an attack in flank, was now rapidly transferred to the downs.  It was necessary for that portion of Maurice’s army which still stood on what remained of the beach to follow this movement.  A rapid change of front was then undertaken, and—­thanks to the careful system of wheeling, marching, and counter-marching in which the army had been educated by William Lewis and Maurice—­was executed with less confusion than might have been expected.

But very few companies of infantry now remained on the strip of beach still bare of the waves, and in the immediate vicinity of the artillery planted high and dry beyond their reach.

The scene was transformed as if by magic, and the battle was now to be fought out in those shifting, uneven hills and hollows, where every soldier stood mid-leg deep in the dry and burning sand.  Fortunately for the States’ army, the wind was in its back, blowing both sand and smoke into the faces of its antagonists, while the already weltering sun glared fiercely in their eyes.  Maurice had skilfully made use of the great advantage which accident had given him that day, and his very refusal to advance and to bring on a premature struggle thus stood him in stead in a variety of ways Lewis Gunther was now ordered, with Marcellus Bax and six squadrons of horse, to take position within the belt of pasture land on the right of the downs.  When he arrived there the van of the archduke’s infantry had already charged the States’ advance under Vere, while just behind and on the side of the musketeers and pikemen a large portion of the enemy’s cavalry was standing stock still on the green.  Without waiting for instructions Lewis ordered a charge.  It was brilliantly successful.  Unheeding a warm salutation in flank from the musketeers as they rode by them, and notwithstanding that they were obliged to take several ditches as they charged, they routed