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A stout smith, confronting the invaders at the gate, almost singly, with his sledge-hammer, was stabbed to the heart by Bossu with his own hand. The soldiers having thus gained admittance, rushed through the streets, putting every man to death who offered the slightest resistance. Within a few minutes four hundred citizens were murdered.
These troops were, however, attacked on the way by a strong detachment under Bossu, Noircarmes, and Romero. After a sharp, action in a heavy snow-storm, De la Marek was completely routed.
His visit to Ghent, so entirely unjustified and mischievous; his failure to effect that junction of his army with the states' force under Bossu, by which the royal army was to have been surprised and annihilated; his having given reason to the common people to suspect her Majesty and the Prince of Orange of collusion with his designs, and of a disposition to seek their private advantage and not the general good of the whole Netherlands; the imminent danger, which he had aggravated, that the Walloon provinces, actuated by such suspicions, would fall away from the "generality" and seek a private accord with Parma; these and similar sins of omission and commission were sharply and shrewishly set forth in the Queen's epistle.
Furthermore, the approach to Quatre Bras was flanked by the extensive Bossu Wood, and by a spinney to the right of the highway. Reille therefore counselled caution, lest the affair should prove to be "a Spanish battle where the English show themselves only when it is time." When, however, Reille's corps pushed home the attack, the weakness of the defence was speedily revealed.
"You know," he had written to Bossu in December, "the evil and the dismay which the loss of the city and fortress of Namur would occasion to us. Let me beseech you that all possible care be taken to preserve them." Nevertheless, their preservation had been entrusted to a feeble-minded old constable, at the head of a handful of cripples.
Such officers as these, besides Gonzaga, Camillo Monte, Mucio Pagano, at the head of such troops as fought that day under the banner of the Cross, might go far in accounting for this last and most tremendous victory of the Inquisition. On the other hand, although Bossu and Champagny were with the states' army, yet their hearts were hardly with the cause.
From one phrase which constantly met our ears, it seemed that the Bois de Bossu was the key of the position. This had been won and lost repeatedly by both sides; and as we neared the battle-field a despatch hurriedly announced to Picton the importance of at once recovering this contested point. The Ninety-fifth were ordered up to the attack.
After a protracted conflict, in which several thousands were killed, the victory was decided in favor of the Spaniards. Twenty- two of the Prince's vessels being captured, and the rest totally routed, Bossu swept across the lake in triumph. The forts belonging to the patriots were immediately taken, and the Harlemers, with their friends, entirely excluded from the lake.
A stout smith, confronting the invaders at the gate, almost singly, with his sledge-hammer, was stabbed to the heart by Bossu with his own hand. The soldiers having thus gained admittance, rushed through the streets, putting every man to death who offered the slightest resistance. Within a few minutes four hundred citizens were murdered.
The historians who have preserved for us the accounts of the ancient southern games from which quotations have been made, are all Englishmen except Bossu, and he entered the country not by the way of Quebec but by way of New Orleans. It is not strange, therefore, that we do not find in use amongst them the name which the early French fathers and traders invariably applied to the game.
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