which he had been placed, through no fault of his own, and to convert
imminent disaster into magnificent victory, will always redound to his
reputation as a great military chief. And this was all the fruit of the
expedition, planned, as Elizabeth thought, with so much secrecy and
discretion. Three days after the battle the stadholder came again before
Nieuport, only to find the garrison strengthened meantime by La Bourlotte
to three thousand men. A rainy week succeeded, and Maurice then
announced to the States-General the necessity of abandoning an
enterprise, a successful issue to which was in his opinion impossible.
The States-General, grown more modest in military matters, testified
their willingness to be governed by his better judgment, and left Ostend
for the Hague on the 18th July. Maurice, after a little skirmishing with
some of the forts around that city, in one of which the archduke's
general La Bourlotte was killed, decided to close the campaign, and he
returned with his whole army on the last day of July into Holland.
The expedition was an absolute failure, but the stadholder had gained a
great victory. The effect produced at home and abroad by this triumphant
measuring of the republican forces, horse, foot, and artillery, in a
pitched battle and on so conspicuous an arena, with the picked veterans
of Spain and Italy, was perhaps worth the cost, but no other benefit was
derived from the invasion of Flanders.
The most healthy moral to be drawn from this brief but memorable campaign
is that the wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war,
success in which seems to require a special education and a distinct
genius. Alternation between hope and despair, between culpable audacity
and exaggerated prudence, are but too apt to mark the warlike counsels of
politicians who have not been bred soldiers. This, at least, had been
eminently the case with Barneveld and his colleagues of the States-
General.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains
Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence
The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war