So far I have abstained from any attempt to describe the military operations of the States, or even the brilliant little enterprises of Vere himself, since his assumption of the command: but at this point, when we enter upon the palmy days of the English in Holland, it is worth while to be more precise. So far Maurice had occupied himself principally with the task of recovering the towns occupied by the Spaniards within the seven provinces;[139] the States-General in the year 1600 resolved upon the bold step of carrying the war into the enemy\'s country. Ostend, which was held by the Queen of England, was to be the base of operations, and the design was to land a force on the Flemish coast and besiege first Nieuport, to the west of Ostend, and afterwards Dunkirk. Maurice and Vere both thought the enterprise hazardous in the extreme, but they were overruled by the civilians. A force of twelve thousand infantry, sixteen hundred cavalry and ten guns was assembled at Flushing, and a fleet was collected to transport it to its destination. The army was organised in the three familiar divisions, vanguard, battle, and rearguard, of which the rearguard under Sir Francis Vere consisted of sixteen hundred English veterans, two thousand five hundred Frisians, two hundred and fifty of Prince Maurice\'s body-guard, and ten cornets of horse, making in all four thousand five hundred men. With Vere were men whose names through themselves[160] or through their successors were to become famous—Sir Edward Cecil, Sir Charles Fairfax, Captain Holles, and others. In another division of the army was a regiment of Scots under Sir William Edmunds, which had recently been recruited to the high strength of one hundred and fifty men to each company. English and Scots already loved to fight side by side.

The force embarked on the 21st of June, but being delayed by calms landed short of Nieuport, marched overland, capturing the fort of Oudenburg on the way, and on the 1st of July was before Nieuport. The Spanish commander, the Archduke Albert, no sooner heard what was going forward than he at once concentrated his army at Ghent for an immediate advance; and Maurice, who was busily preparing for the siege of Nieuport, was surprised by the sudden intelligence that his little garrison at Oudenburg had been overwhelmed, and that the Spanish forces were in full march for his camp. The situation in which he found himself was now very critical. Expecting no such movement Maurice had divided his forces round Nieuport into two parts, which were cut off from each other by the haven that runs through the town. Though dry at low water this haven was unfordable at high tide, and the bridge which was constructing across it was still unfinished. Worst of all, it was the weakest division of the force, three thousand five hundred men under Ernest of Nassau, that stood on the side of the haven nearest to the enemy; and a battle within twenty-four hours was inevitable.
July 2.

The question therefore arose whether the action should be fought in dispute of the enemy\'s passage over a stream called the Yser leet which barred the line of his advance, or on the sandy dunes by the sea-shore, where the Spaniards would certainly seek it if the passage were successfully accomplished. Vere was for the former course, and Maurice, thinking the advice good, ordered Count Ernest\'s division to march straight for the bridge on the Yser leet, saying that he would[161] shortly follow with the rest of the army. Vere protested in vain that this was a perversion of his counsel: either the whole army must march with Count Ernest, or no part of it must move at all; for to send forward a weak division in the hope of delaying the Spanish advance was simply to court defeat. Maurice, however, stuck to his opinion, and at midnight Count Ernest marched off with his division unsupported to the bridge. He arrived too late, for the Spaniards had already secured the passage, and he therefore took up the best position that he could find, behind a dyke, to defend himself as well as he could. The first shot had hardly been fired when his men began to run. It was such a panic as has rarely been matched in the annals of war. Cavalry and infantry, Dutchmen and Scots, threw down their arms, took to their heels and fled like swine possessed of devils into the sea. The Scotch officers of Sir William Edmunds\' regiment strove to rally the fugitives, but in vain: they were cut down one after another, and the men that escaped death by lead or steel were swallowed up literally in the waves. Two thousand five hundred men, including a thousand massacred at Oudenburg, were thus lost, and Maurice had now to face his enemy with a weakened army and with his retreat barred by the haven behind him. Defeat would mean not only annihilation but the undoing of all the work of the rebellion. With superb courage he ordered his fleet of transports to sea, and staked all on the hazard of the coming battle.

Meanwhile Vere, whose division had this day the place of the vanguard, had moved at daybreak down to the bank of the haven and was waiting for the ebb-tide to cross it, when the news came that the Archduke\'s army was in full march along the sea-shore. As soon as the tide permitted he forded the haven with all haste, not allowing the men to strip, for, as he said, by nightfall they would have dry clothes or want none. Presently he came in sight of the enemy, ten thousand foot, sixteen hundred horse and six guns, moving along the[162] flat sands of the sea-shore. The space between the sea and the enclosed country was broken up into three descriptions of ground running parallel one to another; next the sea was the narrow plain of the strand between high- and low-water mark, next the strand were the broken hillocks of the sand-dunes, and between the dunes and the enclosed land ran a margin of unbroken green, called by Vere the Greenway. Vere lost no time in taking up a position at the narrowest point that he could find, distributing his division skilfully among the hillocks to repel an advance through the dunes, and posting two guns, by Maurice\'s order, to command the Greenway. To his right rear stood the battle or second division, one thousand strong, and in rear of the battle the third division of rather more than two thousand men. The army was thus formed in echelon of three lines with the right refused, its left resting in the sea, its right on the enclosed land.

Weak in cavalry, the Spaniards halted till the rising tide had covered all but thirty yards of the strand, and then moved the whole of their horse to the Greenway and of their infantry into the dunes. Maurice likewise withdrew his cavalry from the shore and massed it in columns on the Greenway, leaving but two troops, both of them English, still standing on the beach. For two whole hours of a beautiful summer\'s afternoon the two armies waited each for the other to advance, and at last, at half-past two, the Spaniards began to move. Vere, taking every possible advantage of the sandhills to protect and conceal his men, had thrust forward small parties to contest every inch of ground; and it was against the foremost of these, two and fifty English and fifty Frisians, that the first attack of five hundred of the flower of the Spanish infantry was directed. Meanwhile the Spanish cavalry moved forward along the Greenway. This cavalry, disordered by the fire of Vere\'s two guns and galled in flank by a detachment of his musketeers, soon gave way before the cavalry of the States; but the struggle of the infantry in the van was very severe.[163] The first attack of the Spanish vanguard was repulsed, but being quickly reinforced it moved forward again and the fight then became desperate. For a time the battle seems to have resolved itself into a furious contest for the possession of a single sandhill, round which, as round the two-gun-battery at Inkermann, both sides fought madly hand to hand, each alternately repelling and repelled, till at last this "bloody morsel," as Vere called it, was finally carried by the English.

The Archduke without delay brought up his centre in line with his vanguard, and essayed to force his way through Vere\'s right. The columns were met by a murderous fire from a party of musketeers which had been posted by Vere to check any such movement, and were driven back; and then the whole strength of the Spanish attack was concentrated once more upon Vere\'s main position. Husbanding his strength to the utmost, Vere gradually drew the whole of his English into action and fought on. So far, owing to the skill of his dispositions, little more than half of his force had been engaged, but seeing that they were likely to be overwhelmed by numbers, he sent messengers to summon his reserve of two thousand Frisian infantry, and to beg Maurice to help him with cavalry from his right. Messenger after messenger was despatched without result. Vere went down among his few remaining men, and the little force, cheered by his presence, fought gallantly on and still held the enemy at bay. He was struck by a musket ball in the thigh and by a second in the leg, but he concealed the wounds and held his men together. Yet the expected reinforcements came not, and the English were slowly forced back, still in good order and still showing their teeth, from the dunes on to the beach, the Spaniards following after them, but afraid to press the pursuit. As the English retired, Vere\'s horse was shot under him and fell, pinning him helpless to the ground. Three of his officers ran up and freed him; and mounted on the[164] crupper behind one of them, he continued calmly to direct the retreat.

Arrived on the sands he found his reserve of Frisians still halted in their original position, having never received orders to move, and with them the two troops of English horse. A charge of the cavalry, supported by two hundred infantry under Horace Vere, soon swept the Spaniards back into the dunes, and then at last Sir Francis made himself over to the surgeon, while Maurice came forward, cool and unmoved, to save the day. The Spaniards now massed two thousand infantry together for a further advance, while the English officers, weary with fighting and parched with heat and sand, exerted themselves to rally their men. The English were quickly reformed, so quickly that the Spaniards, who had sent forward a party to disperse them, promptly withdrew it at the sight of Horace Vere returning with his two hundred men from the beach. Maurice saw the movement and exclaimed joyfully, "Voyez les Anglais qui tournent à la charge." He at once ordered up the cavalry from the right under Sir Edward Cecil; and meanwhile Horace Vere and his brother officers hastily decided that their only chance was at once to charge the two thousand Spaniards with their handful of men. They rushed desperately down upon them; the Spaniards, worn out by a long march and hard fighting, gave way, and Maurice catching the supreme moment launched Cecil\'s troopers into the thick of them. A second charge disposed of the Spanish horse; Maurice ordered a general advance, and the battle was won. Three thousand Spaniards were killed outright; six hundred more with all their guns and one hundred and twenty colours were captured. On the side of the States the loss fell almost wholly on the English. Of their captains eight were killed, and but two came out of the field unhurt; of the sixteen hundred men eight hundred were killed and wounded. They with the Frisians had borne the brunt of the action, and Maurice gave them credit for it. So ended the fight of[165] Nieuport,[140] the dying struggle of the once famous Spanish soldier, and the first great day of the new English infantry.
1601.
July 9.

Next year the Archduke Albert sought revenge for his defeat by the investment of the one stronghold of the United Provinces in Flanders, the little fortified fishing-town of Ostend. The garrison had made itself so obnoxious to the surrounding country that the States of Flanders petitioned the Archduke to stamp out the pestilent little fortress once for all; and hence it was that in the following years the principal operations grouped themselves around the siege. The Archduke\'s army consisted of twenty thousand men with fifty siege-guns; the garrison of barely six thousand men, half English and half Dutch, of which fifteen hundred English, all dressed in red cassocks, were a reinforcement just imported from across the sea. Francis Vere was in supreme command, and his brother Horace commanded a regiment under him.

I shall not weary the reader with details of Vere\'s skill and resource in improving the defences of the town, or of the incessant encounters that took place during the first weeks of the siege. The Spanish fire was so hot and the losses of the besieged so heavy that the garrison was fairly worn out with the work. Vere was dangerously wounded in the head within the first three weeks and compelled to throw up the command until restored to health, and at the close of the first month hardly a red cassock of the fifteen hundred was to be seen, every man being wounded or dead. Nevertheless, the sea being always open to the besieged, fresh men a............