In a few minutes after the orders given to Hohenlo, that dashing soldier had circumvented the Spaniards, and emerged upon the plain between them and the entrance to the defile, The next instant the trumpets sounded a charge, and Hohenlo fell upon the foremost regiment, that of Sultz, while the rearguard, consisting of Trevico’s Neapolitan regiment, was assailed by Du Bois, Donck, Rysoir, Marcellus Bax, and Sir Francis Vere.  The effect seemed almost supernatural.  The Spanish cavalry—­those far-famed squadrons of Guzman and Basta—­broke at the first onset and galloped off for the pass as if they had been riding a race.  Most of them escaped through the hollow into the morass beyond.  The musketeers of Sultz’s regiment hardly fired a shot, and fell back in confusion upon the thickly clustered pikemen.  The assailants, every one of them in complete armour, on powerful horses, and armed not with lances but with carbines, trampled over the panic-struck and struggling masses of leather jerkined pikemen and shot them at arm’s length.  The charge upon Trevico’s men at the same moment was just as decisive.  In less time than it took afterwards to describe the scene, those renowned veterans were broken into a helpless mass of dying, wounded, or fugitive creatures, incapable of striking a blow.

Thus the Germans in the front and the Neapolitans in the rear had been simultaneously shattered, and rolled together upon the two other regiments, those of Hachicourt and La Barlotte, which were placed between them.  Nor did these troops offer any better resistance, but were paralysed and hurled out of existence like the rest.  In less than an hour the Spanish army was demolished.  Varax himself lay dead upon the field, too fortunate not to survive his disgrace.  It was hardly more than daylight on that dull January morning; nine o’clock had scarce chimed from the old brick steeples of Turnhout, yet two thousand Spaniards had fallen before the blows of eight hundred Netherlanders, and there were five hundred prisoners beside.  Of Maurice’s army not more than nine or ten were slain.  The story sounds like a wild legend.  It was as if the arm of each Netherlander had been nerved by the memory of fifty years of outrage, as if the spectre of their half-century of crime had appalled the soul of every Spaniard.  Like a thunderbolt the son of William the Silent smote that army of Philip, and in an instant it lay blasted on the heath of Tiel.  At least it could hardly be called sagacious generalship on the part of the stadholder.  The chances were all against him, and if instead of Varax those legions had been commanded that morning by old Christopher Mondragon, there might perhaps have been another tale to tell.  Even as it was, there had been a supreme moment when the Spanish disaster had nearly been changed to victory.  The fight was almost done, when a small party of Staten’ cavalry, who at the beginning of the action had followed the enemy’s horse in its sudden retreat through the gap, came whirling