Old Count Peter Ernest Mansfeld—­a grizzled veteran, who had passed his childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, under fire—­commanded at the land-end of the dyke, in the fortress of Stabroek, in which neighbourhood his whole division was stationed.  Seeing how the day was going, he called a council of war.  The patriots had gained a large section of the dyke.  So much was certain.  Could they succeed in utterly demolishing that bulwark in the course of the day?  If so, how were they to be dislodged before their work was perfected?  It was difficult to assault their position.  Three thousand Hollanders, Antwerpers, Englishmen—­“mad bulldogs all,” as Parma called them—­showing their teeth very mischievously, with one hundred and sixty Zeeland vessels throwing in their broadsides from both margins of the dyke, were a formidable company to face.

“Oh for one half hour of Alexander in the field!” sighed one of the Spanish officers in council.  But Alexander was more than four leagues away, and it was doubtful whether he even knew of the fatal occurrence.  Yet how to send him a messenger.  Who could reach him through that valley of death?  Would it not be better to wait till nightfall?  Under the cover of darkness something might be attempted, which in the daylight would be hopeless.  There was much anxiety, and much difference of opinion had been expressed, when Camillo Capizucca, colonel of the Italian Legion, obtained a hearing.  A man bold in words as in deeds, he vehemently denounced the pusillanimity which would wait either for Parma or for nightfall.  “What difference will it make,” he asked, “whether we defer our action until either darkness or the General arrives?  In each case we give the enemy time enough to destroy the dyke, and thoroughly to relieve the city.  That done, what good can be accomplished by our arms?  Then our disheartened soldiers will either shrink from a fruitless combat or march to certain death.”  Having thus, very warmly but very sagaciously, defined the position in which all were placed, he proceeded to declare that he claimed, neither for himself nor for his legion, any superiority over the rest of the army.  He knew not that the Italians were more to be relied upon than others in the time of danger, but this he did know, that no man in the world was so devoted as he was to the Prince of Parma.  To show that devotion by waiting with folded arms behind a wall until the Prince should arrive to extricate his followers, was not in his constitution.  He claimed the right to lead his Italians against the enemy at once—­in the front rank, if others chose to follow; alone, if the rest preferred to wait till a better leader should arrive.