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"If the enemy is reinforced by these six thousand fresh troops," said Alexander; "it will make him master of the field." And well he might hold this opinion, for, in the meagre state of both the Spanish and the liberating armies, the addition of three thousand fresh reiters and as many infantry would be enough to turn the scale.
The head of the League was Henri, Duc de Guise the second, "Balafre," who had won that title in fighting against the German reiters the year before, when they entered France under Condo.
Amid all the hubbub of learned doctors of law, archbishops-Leaguer and political-Sorbonne pedants, solemn grandees from Spain with Latin orations in their pockets, intriguing Guises, huckstering Mayennes, wrathful Huguenots, sanguinary cardinal-legates, threatening world-monarchs heralded by Spanish musketeers, Italian lancers, and German reiters shrill screams of warning from the English queen, grim denunciations from Dutch Calvinists, scornful repulses from the holy father; he kept his temper and his eye- sight, as perfectly as he had ever done through the smoke and din of the wildest battle-field.
In the Spanish Netherlands the newly-found treasure served to pay the only labourers required in a subjugated and almost deserted country, the pikemen of Spain and Italy, and the reiters of Germany. Prices could not sustain themselves in the face of depopulation. Where there was no security for property, no home-market, no foreign intercourse, industrial pursuits had become almost impossible.
The Sister Agnes was a nun professed, and what was her land and wealth revert to this Order." "Give me straightway the body of the Lady Sybil of Hoya!" roars Carpezan, in great wrath. "If not, I make a signal to my Reiters, and give you and your convent up to war."
The regular army of the republic, as reconstructed, was but ten thousand foot and two thousand horse, but it was capable of being largely expanded by the trainbands of the cities, well disciplined and enured to hardship, and by the levies of German reiters and other, foreign auxiliaries in such numbers as could be paid for by the hard-pressed exchequer of the provinces.
The prince at the same time was made aware that Verdugo was about to receive important succour, and he was advised by the deputies of the States-General present at his headquarters to send out his German Reiters to intercept them. Maurice refused. Should his cavalry be defeated, he said, his whole army would be endangered.
"Sir," said the boy, coming nearer, "I will tell YOU YOU I will tell not him who threatens. Mother said you spared our huts, and the lady gave us bread when we came to the castle gate in winter, and she would not see the reiters lay waste your folk's doings down there without warning you." "My good lad!
I longed to see what they were like to examine the faces of these haughty Reiters who for the last four days had been fleeing before us and always refusing a real encounter.
Hereditary monarch by French law and history, released from his heresy by the authority that could bind and loose, purged as with hyssop and washed whiter than snow, it should go hard with him if Philip, and Farnese, and Mayenne, and all the pikemen and reiters they might muster, could keep him very long from the throne of his ancestors.
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