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Updated: August 11, 2025
And now, for woods, and fields, and springing flowers, Behold a town arise, bulwarked with walls and lofty towers; Two rival armies all the plain o'erspread, Each in battalia ranged, and shining arms arrayed With eagle eyes beholding both from far, Namur, the price and mistress of the war." The "Birth of the Muse" is a miserable fiction. One good line it has which was borrowed from Dryden.
The advanced guard of infantry, under Sir Francis Vere consisting of two thousand six hundred Englishmen, and two thousand eight hundred Frisians, with some companies of horse, followed by the battalia under Solms, and the rearguard under Tempel then slowly and with difficulty moved along the same dangerous path with the water as high as their armpits, and often rising nearly over their heads.
The next day the army having passed the Elbe at Wittenberg, and joined the Saxon army near Torgau, his Majesty caused both armies to draw up in battalia, giving every brigade the same post in the lines as he purposed to fight in.
'Twas an open space we had to cross, dotted with gorsebushes; and the enemy's regiments, plain to see, drawn up in battalia on the slope above, which here was gentler than to the south and west. But hardly had we gone ten yards than I saw a puff of white smoke above, then another, and then the summit ring'd with flame; and heard the noise of it roaring in the hills around.
He then issued orders for the whole battalia which, since the junction, had been under command of Mayenne, Farnese reserving for himself the superintendence of the entire army to countermarch rapidly towards the Marne and take up a position opposite Lagny. La Motte, with the rearguard, was directed immediately to follow.
Between the Prior and Givry were six pieces of heavy artillery, while the battalia, formed of eight hundred horse in six squadrons, was commanded by the king in person, and covered on both sides by English and Swiss infantry, amounting to some four thousand in all.
The white standard of his battalia had been seen floating wildly and purposelessly over the field; for his bannerman, Pot de Rhodes, a young noble of Dauphiny, wounded mortally in the head, with blood streaming over his face and blinding his sight, was utterly unable to control his horse, who gallopped hither and thither at his own caprice, misleading many troopers who followed in his erratic career.
Then came the battalia and rear, crowding very closely upon each other.
The signal of battle being given with two cannon shots, we marched in order of battalia down the hill, being drawn up in two lines with bodies of reserve; the enemy advanced to meet us much in the same form, with this difference only, that they had placed their cannon on their right, and the king had placed ours in the centre, before, or rather between two great brigades of foot.
On the edge of the downs, on the narrow slip of hard sand above high-water mark, and on Vere's right, Maurice had placed a battery of six demi-cannon. Behind the advance was the battalia, or centre, under command of that famous fighter, George Everard Solms, consisting of Germans, Swiss, French, and Walloons.
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