to the States-General the necessity of abandoning an enterprise, a successful issue to which was in his opinion impossible.  The States-General, grown more modest in military matters, testified their willingness to be governed by his better judgment, and left Ostend for the Hague on the 18th July.  Maurice, after a little skirmishing with some of the forts around that city, in one of which the archduke’s general La Bourlotte was killed, decided to close the campaign, and he returned with his whole army on the last day of July into Holland.

The expedition was an absolute failure, but the stadholder had gained a great victory.  The effect produced at home and abroad by this triumphant measuring of the republican forces, horse, foot, and artillery, in a pitched battle and on so conspicuous an arena, with the picked veterans of Spain and Italy, was perhaps worth the cost, but no other benefit was derived from the invasion of Flanders.

The most healthy moral to be drawn from this brief but memorable campaign is that the wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war, success in which seems to require a special education and a distinct genius.  Alternation between hope and despair, between culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence, are but too apt to mark the warlike counsels of politicians who have not been bred soldiers.  This, at least, had been eminently the case with Barneveld and his colleagues of the States-General.

     Etext editor’s bookmarks: 

     Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains
     Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence
     The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war

HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year’s Truce—­1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, Volume 74, 1600-1602

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Effects of the Nieuport campaign—­The general and the statesman—­ The Roman empire and the Turk—­Disgraceful proceedings of the mutinous soldiers in Hungary—­The Dunkirk pirates—­Siege of Ostend by the Archduke—­Attack on Rheinberg by Prince Maurice—­Siege and capitulation of Meura—­Attempt on Bois-le-Duc—­Concentration of the war at Ostend—­Account of the belligerents—­Details of the siege—­ Feigned offer of Sir Francis Vere to capitulate—­Arrival of reinforcements from the States—­Attack and overthrow of the besiegers.

The Nieuport campaign had exhausted for the time both belligerents.  The victor had saved the republic from impending annihilation, but was incapable of further efforts during the summer.  The conquered cardinal-archduke, remaining essentially in the same position as before, consoled himself with the agreeable fiction that the States, notwithstanding their triumph, had in reality suffered the most in the great battle.  Meantime both parties did their best to repair damages and to recruit their armies.