Prince and Heretic

by Marjorie Bowen

There he was joined by a messenger disguised as a priest who brought him news from Maestricht.

It was completely disastrous; illness had prevented Hoogstraaten from taking his appointed command, and the Seigneur de Villars had led the forces which were to attack Juliers, raise the country, and secure Maestricht. These objects had failed. Two Spanish generals, De Lodrovo and D'Avila, had attacked and defeated him at Dalem; all the invading force of three thousand men had been put to the sword, and De Villars himself sent to Brussels for execution.

So ended one of the three attempts on the Netherlands. Louis crushed the dispatch (which had been sent by one of the Prince's secret agents in Maestricht) into his doublet, and said not a word of its contents to any, even to Adolphus.

That evening they dined in the convent of Heiliger Lee from which the monks had fled at their approach; the abbot had joined Aremberg at Wittewerum.

The building was pleasantly situated on a slightly rising ground which behind sloped up to a wood of short poplars and beech; to the left was a large plain divided, for agricultural purposes, into squares by means of ditches or canals; before it and to the right was a vast stretch of swampy ground which, though covered with lush green grass, and in part transformed into pasture land, was, at this season of the year, impassable; a stone causeway leading to the convent crossed this deceitful morass, which was bordered by a road winding round the wood and hill—the road by which Aremberg must arrive if he made an attack.

Louis' position was as good as was possible to find in a country so dangerous by reason of ditches and swamps, the shoulder of the hill protected some of the troops, and the remainder occupied the only piece of dry ground in the vicinity; the morass stretched before their encampment as a natural defence; the heights, too, of Heiliger Lee (artificially created by early monks) were the only rising portions of ground in the whole flat district which was girdled and swamped by the overflowing waters of the Em and the Lippe. The ground was historic; as the two brothers wandered in the convent gardens before the dinner hour, they reminded each other of their school learning, when they had read of Hermann, that early Goth who, on the very swamp at which they now gazed, had turned back the victorious legions of Rome.

And now again the Germanic people were gathered to resist Latin tyranny and to oppose proud assumption of universal dominion by the assertion of man's eternal right to freedom of person and of conscience.

It was a fair evening, and the scene before the two young generals was beautiful with the languid, mellow, golden beauty of the Low Countries. The swamps, covered with grass of a most brilliant green hue, melted to a wistful horizon straight as the line of the sea and misted with gold which faded into the soft azure of the heavens; the woods were of the same hues, a sharp, bright, delicate green and gold, dull and glowing like the tint of honey.

The road and the stone causeway were warm with the dusky golden shadow of evening; the convent buildings also were warm and mellow in tone; the low-walled gardens before the doors were filled with homely flowers—pinks, stocks, and wallflowers.

Louis leant his elbows on the wall and looked across the low sweet prospect. His eye travelled to the plain where his ill-equipped forces were encamped; he watched the men moving about among the tents preparing their food, and thought of those four thousand beaten out of existence at Dalem, and of the Seigneur de Villars waiting to be sent to the scaffold.