What could Vere mean then by talking of two or three days in the trenches and of a stone bridge? Yet these are his words:-" Le matin de bonne heure nous marchames vers Nieuport et a la basse marée traversames la riviere du coste ou elle faist le Havre de la ville, et ainsy nous campasmes mettans deux ou trois jours à faire les quartiers, et à nous retrancher ès lieux les plus advantageux pour notre seureté, et le siege de ville, faisans un pont de pierre au plus estroict du Havre pour y faire passer et repasser en tout temps nostre chariage et nos troupes, quand besoin en seroit."

On the intelligence received in the night of the arrival of the enemy at Oudenburg, Vere advised instantly crossing the harbour and marching against him with the whole army. Maurice decided, however, to send the detachment under Ernest, to the great dissatisfaction of Sir Francis. Vere then states that the army was ordered to cross the haven at dawn of day, at the first low tide.

"Le reste de l'armee fut commandé de marcher vers la riviere afin de la passer à l'aube du jour à la premiere basse marée.”

Now it is certain that on the 2nd of July it was exactly high tide at 3 A.M., or about dawn of day.

Count Lewis Gunther states expressly in his letter, often cited, that he was first to cross with the cavalry, when the tide was out, at about 8 A.M. It is also manifest by every account given of the battle, that it was high tide again at or after 3 P.M., which compelled the transferring of the fight from the submerged beach to the downs and to the pastures beyond.

In these statements Vere is so manifestly contradicted, not only by the accounts given by all contemporaries and eye-witnesses, but by other passages in his own narrative, that one has in general a right to prefer the assertions of other actors in the battle to his, if there is no other way of arriving at a clear understanding of the affair.

Thus he says that at the beginning of the action he wished the advanced cavalry under Lewis Gunther to approach the enemy, and that "the young lord" refused. The account of the young lord is the exact reverse of these assertions. I shall here give in juxtaposition the text of Vere and of the private letter of Lewis, observing that this letter-not written for publication, and never published, so far as I know, till two hundred and fifty years after it was written for the private information of the writer's brother—gives by far the most intelligible and succint account of the battle to be met with anywhere.

NOTE ON VERE.

These extracts will be sufficient to show the impossibility of making both accounts agree in regard to many momentous points.

When did two accounts of the same battle ever resemble each other? It must be confessed that modesty was not a leading characteristic of Sir Francis Vere. According to the whole tenor of his narrative he was

himself not only a great part, but the whole of the events he describes; the victory of Nieuport was entirely due to his arrangements, and to the personal valour of himself and of the 1600 English soldiers; Prince Maurice filling hardly a subordinate part in superintendence of the battle, Count Lewis Gunther being dismissed with a single sneer, and no other name but Vere's own and that of his brother Horace being even mentioned. He admits that he did not participate in the final and conclusive charge, being then disabled, but observes that having satisfied himself that his directions would be carried out, and that nothing else was left but to pursue the enemy, he thought it time to have his wounds dressed.

"There was no loss worth speaking of," he says, "except that of the English, 600 of whom were killed. I should not venture to attribute," he observes, "the whole honour of the victory to the poor English troop of 1600 men, but I leave the judgment thereof to those who can decide with less suspicion of partiality. I will merely affirm that the English left nothing to do for the rest of the army but to follow the chase, and that one has never before heard that with so small a number in an indifferent position, where the only advantage was the choice and the good use which could be made of it, without the use of spade or other instrument of fortification, an army so large and so victorious as that of the archduke could have been resisted in such a continued struggle and so thoroughly defeated."

Certainly the defeat of an army of 10,000 veterans in the open field by 1600 men is a phenomenon rarely witnessed, and one must be forgiven for not accepting as gospel truth the account of the leader of the 1600, when it is directly contradicted by every other statement on record.

In Vere's advanced guard-nearly half the whole army-there were 2600 Englishmen and 2800 Frisians, besides several squadrons of cavalry, according to his own statement in another part of his narrative.

How, therefore, the whole battle should have been fought by a mere portion of the English contingent it is difficult to comprehend.

Vere makes no allusion to the combat of Leffingen, which was an essential part of the battle; to the heroic self-sacrifice of Ernest and his division, by which alone the rest of the army were enabled to gain the victory; nor has he a word for the repeated charges of cavalry by which the infantry fight was protected.

Lewis Gunther on the contrary, whose account is as modest as it is clear, gives full credit to the splendid achievements of the infantry under Vere, but in describing the cavalry combats, he mentions the loss in the six cavalry companies under his immediate command as 171 killed and wounded, while Ernest's loss has never been placed at less than 1000.

1600.

EFFECTS OF THE WAR IN FLANDERS.

55

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 Meurs- 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.

The States-or in other words Barneveld, who was the States-had learned a lesson. Time was to show whether it would be a profitable one, or whether Maurice, who was the preceptor of Europe in the art of war, would continue to be a docile pupil of the great Advocate even in military affairs. It is probable that the alienation between the statesman and the general, which was to widen as time advanced, may be dated from the day of Nieuport.

Fables have even been told which indicated the popular belief in an intensity of resentment on the part of the prince, which certainly did not exist till long afterwards.

"Ah, scoundrel!" the stadholder was said to have exclaimed, giving the Advocate a box on the ear as he came to

wish him joy of his great victory, "you sold us, but God prevented your making the transfer."

History would disdain even an allusion to such figmentsquite as disgraceful, certainly, to Maurice as to Barnevelddid they not point the moral and foreshadow some of the vast but distant results of events which had already taken place, and had they not been so generally repeated that it is a duty for the lover of truth to put his foot upon the calumny, even at the risk for a passing moment of reviving it.

The condition of the war in Flanders had established a temporary equilibrium among the western powers-France and England discussing, intriguing, and combining in secret with each other, against each other, and in spite of each other, in regard to the great conflict-while Spain and the cardinal-archduke on the one side, and the republic on the other, prepared themselves for another encounter in the blood-stained arena.

Meantime, on the opposite verge of what was called European civilization, the perpetual war between the Roman Empire and the Grand Turk had for the moment been brought into a nearly similar equation. Notwithstanding the vast amount of gunpowder exploded during so many wearisome years, the problem of the Crescent and the Cross was not much nearer a solution in the East than was that of mass and conventicle in the West. War was the normal and natural condition of mankind. This fact, at least, seemed to have been acquired and added to the mass of human knowledge.

From the prolific womb of Germany came forth, to swell impartially the Protestant and Catholic hosts, vast swarms of human creatures. Sold by their masters at as high prices as could be agreed upon beforehand, and receiving for themselves five stivers a day, irregularly paid, until the carrioncrow rendered them the last service, they found at times more demand for their labour in the great European market

1 See Van der Kemp, ii. 88 and 298, 299. The learned historian of course denounces the tale as a falsehood.