Cologne and to its manifest detriment, and in various other ways they had insulted the Catholics throughout those regions.  And who could wonder at such insolence, seeing that the army in Flanders, formerly the terror of heretics, had become since the truce so weak as to be the laughing-stock of the United Provinces?  If it was expensive to maintain these armies in the obedient Netherlands, let there be economy elsewhere, they urged.

From India came gold and jewels.  From other kingdoms came ostentation and a long series of vain titles for the crown of Spain.  Flanders was its place of arms, its nursery of soldiers, its bulwark in Europe, and so it should be preserved.

There was ground for these complaints.  The army at the disposition of the Archduke had been reduced to 8000 infantry and a handful of cavalry.  The peace establishment of the Republic amounted to 20,000 foot, 3000 horse, besides the French and English regiments.

So soon as the news of the occupation of Julich was officially communicated to the Spanish cabinet, a subsidy of 400,000 crowns was at once despatched to Brussels.  Levies of Walloons and Germans were made without delay by order of Archduke Albert and under guidance of Spinola, so that by midsummer the army was swollen to 18,000 foot and 3000 horse.  With these the great Genoese captain took the field in the middle of August.  On the 22nd of that month the army was encamped on some plains mid-way between Maestricht and Aachen.  There was profound mystery both at Brussels and at the Hague as to the objective point of these military movements.  Anticipating an attack upon Julich, the States had meantime strengthened the garrison of that important place with 3000 infantry and a regiment of horse.  It seemed scarcely probable therefore that Spinola would venture a foolhardy blow at a citadel so well fortified and defended.  Moreover, there was not only no declaration of war, but strict orders had been given by each of the apparent belligerents to their military commanders to abstain from all offensive movements against the adversary.  And now began one of the strangest series of warlike evolution’s that were ever recorded.  Maurice at the head of an army of 14,000 foot and 3000 horse manoeuvred in the neighbourhood of his great antagonist and professional rival without exchanging a blow.  It was a phantom campaign, the prophetic rehearsal of dreadful marches and tragic histories yet to be, and which were to be enacted on that very stage and on still wider ones during a whole generation of mankind.  That cynical commerce in human lives which was to become one of the chief branches of human industry in the century had already begun.