“Long live the Beggarmen!” they shouted, and yet again they sang the song of
Beat the drum! Beat the drum!
Drums of war!
XV
William the Silent, with his army, was at the gates of Liége. But before crossing the Meuse he made sundry marches and counter-marches, leading the Duke astray, for all his vigilance.
Ulenspiegel applied himself most diligently to his duties as a soldier, worked his arquebus most skilfully, and kept his eyes and ears wide open.
Now at that time there arrived in the camp certain gentlemen of Flanders and Brabant, and these lived in friendly fashion with the colonels and captains of the Prince’s following.
But soon there came into being two parties in the camp, who began to dispute one with the other continually, some saying that William was a traitor, others that such accusation was a gross libel on the Prince, and that they who had made it should be forced to eat their words. Suspicion grew and grew like a spot of oil, and at length they came to blows—small companies of six, eight, or a dozen men fighting together in single combat, with all kinds of weapons and sometimes with arquebuses even.
One day the Prince, hearing the noise, came to see what was going on, and walked straight in between the combatants. It chanced that a piece of shot hit his sword and struck it from his side. He stopped the combat, and visited the whole camp, intending to put an end once for all to these combats and to these cries of “Death to William!” “Death to the war!”