Within a week from the time of his departure from the Hague to engage in this daring adventure, the stadholder had returned to that little capital, having achieved a complete success.  The enthusiastic demonstrations throughout the land on account of so signal a victory can easily be imagined.  Nothing like this had ever before been recorded in the archives of the young commonwealth.  There had been glorious defences of beleaguered cities, where scenes of heroic endurance and self-sacrifice had been enacted, such as never can be forgotten so long as the history of human liberty shall endure, but a victory won in the open field over the most famous legions of Spain and against overwhelming numbers, was an achievement entirely without example.  It is beyond all doubt that the force under Varax was at least four times as large as that portion of the States’ army which alone was engaged; for Maurice had not a foot-soldier on the field until the battle was over, save the handful of musketeers who had followed Vere and Bax at the beginning of the action.

Therefore it is that this remarkable action merits a much more attentive consideration than it might deserve, regarded purely as a military exploit.  To the military student a mere cavalry affair, fought out upon an obscure Brabantine heath between a party of Dutch carabineers and Spanish pikemen, may seem of little account—­a subject fitted by picturesque costume and animated action for the pencil of a Wouvermanns or a Terburg, but conveying little instruction.  As illustrating a period of transition in which heavy armoured troopers—­each one a human iron-clad fortress moving at speed and furnished with the most formidable portable artillery then known—­could overcome the resistance of almost any number of foot-soldiers in light marching gear and armed with the antiquated pike, the affair may be worthy of a moment’s attention; and for this improvement—­itself now as obsolete as the slings and cataphracts of Roman legions—­the world was indebted to Maurice.  But the shock of mighty armies, the manoeuvring of vast masses in one magnificent combination, by which the fate of empires, the happiness or the misery of the peoples for generations, may perhaps be decided in a few hours, undoubtedly require a higher constructive genius than could be displayed in any such hand-to-hand encounter as that of Turnhout, scientifically managed as it unquestionably was.  The true and abiding interest of the battle is derived from is moral effect, from its influence on the people of the Netherlands.  And this could scarcely be exaggerated.  The nation was electrified, transformed in an instant.  Who now should henceforth dare to say that one Spanish fighting-man was equal to five or ten Hollanders?  At last the days of Jemmingen and Mooker-heath needed no longer to be remembered by every patriot with a shudder of shame.  Here at least in the open field a Spanish army, after in vain refusing a combat and endeavouring to escape, had literally bitten the dust