The two armies lay over against each other, with the river between them, for some days longer, but it was obvious that nothing further would be attempted on either side.  Mondragon had accomplished the object for which he had marched from Brabant.  He had, spoiled the autumn campaign of Maurice, and, was, now disposed to return before winter to, his own quarters.  He sent a trumpet accordingly to his antagonist, begging him, half in jest, to have more consideration for his infirmities than to keep him out in his old age in such foul weather, but to allow him the military honour of being last to break up camp.  Should Maurice consent to move away, Mondragon was ready to pledge himself not to pursue him, and within three days to leave his own entrenchments.

The proposition was not granted, and very soon afterwards the Spaniard, deciding to retire, crossed the Rhine on the 11th October.  Maurice made a slight attempt at pursuit, sending Count William Lewis with some cavalry, who succeeded in cutting off a few wagons.  The army, however, returned safely, to be dispersed into various garrisons.

This was Mondragon’s last feat of, arms.  Less than three months afterwards, in Antwerp citadel, as the veteran was washing his hands previously to going to the dinner-table, he sat down and died.  Strange to say, this man—­who had spent almost a century on the battlefield, who had been a soldier in nearly every war that had been waged in any part of Europe during that most belligerent age, who had come an old man to the Netherlands before Alva’s arrival, and had ever since been constantly and personally engaged in the vast Flemish tragedy which had now lasted well nigh thirty years—­had never himself lost a drop of blood.  His battle-fields had been on land and water, on ice, in fire, and at the bottom of the sea, but he had never received a wound.  Nay, more; he had been blown up in a fortress—­the castle of Danvilliers in Luxembourg, of which he was governor—­where all perished save his wife and himself, and, when they came to dig among the ruins, they excavated at last the ancient couple, protected by the framework of a window in the embrasure of which they had been seated, without a scratch or a bruise.  He was a Biscayan by descent, but born in Medina del Campo.  A strict disciplinarian, very resolute and pertinacious, he had the good fortune to be beloved by his inferiors, his equals, and his superiors.  He was called the father of his soldiers, the good Mondragon, and his name was unstained by any of those deeds of ferocity which make the chronicles of the time resemble rather the history of wolves than of men.  To a married daughter, mother of several children, he left a considerable fortune.