which was gradually evolved by the patriots in the long War of
Independence, was its minute attention to detail. In the first years of
the war, William the Silent had to depend, for field operations, on
mutinous and inefficient mercenaries and on raw countrymen who had
nothing but devotion to oppose to the discipline and skill of the best
regular army in the world. Such troops were, from the point of view of
soldiers like Alva, mere _canaille_, and the ludicrous ease with which
their armies were destroyed (as at Jemmingen and Mookerheyde), at the
cost of the lives of perhaps a dozen Spanish veterans, went far to
justify this view. But, fortunately for the Dutch, their fortified towns
were exceedingly numerous, and the individual bravery of
citizen-militia, who were fighting for the lives of every soul within
their walls, baffled time after time all the efforts of Alva's men. In
the open, Spanish officers took incredible liberties with the enemy;
once, at any rate, they marched for hours together along submerged
embankments with hostile vessels firing into them from either side.
Behind walls the Dutch were practically a match for the most furious
valour of the assailants.
The insurgents' first important victory in the open field, that of
Rymenant near Malines (1577), was won by the skill of "Bras de Fer," de
la Noue, a veteran French general, and the stubbornness of the English
contingent of the Dutch army--for England, from 1572 onwards, sent out
an ever-increasing number of volunteers. This battle was soon followed
by the great defeat of Gembloux (1578), and William the Silent was not
destined to see the rise of the Dutch army. Maurice of Nassau was the
real organizer of victory. In the wreck of all feudal and burgher
military institutions, he turned to the old models of Xenophon,
Polybius, Aelian and the rest. Drill, as rigid and as complicated as
that of the Macedonian phalanx, came into vogue, the infantry was
organized more strictly into companies and regiments, the cavalry into
troops or cornets. The _Reiter_ tactics of the pistol were followed by
the latter, the former consisted of pikes, halberts and "shot." This
form was generally followed in central Europe, as usual, without the
spirit, but in Holland it was the greater trustworthiness of the rank
and file that allowed of more flexible formations, and here we no longer
see the foot of an army drawn up, as at Jemmingen, in one solid and
immovable "square." In their own country and with the system best suited
thereto, the Dutch, who moreover acquired greater skill and steadiness
day by day, maintained their ground against all the efforts of a Parma
and a Spinola. Indeed, it is the best tribute to the vitality of the
Spanish system that the inevitable _debacle_ was so long delayed. The
campaigns of Spinola in Germany demonstrated that the "Dutch" system, as
a system for general use, was at any rate no better than the system over
which it had locally asserted its superiority, and the spirit, and not
the form, of Maurice's practice achieved the ultimate victory of the
Netherlanders. In the Thirty Years' War, the unsuccessful armies of
Mansfeld and many others were modelled on the Dutch system,--the forces
of Spinola, of Tilly and of Wallenstein, on the Spanish. In other words,
these systems as such meant little; the discipline and spirit behind
them, everything. Yet the contribution made by the Dutch system to the
armies of to-day was not small; to Maurice and his comrades we owe,
first the introduction of careful and accurate drill, and secondly the
beginnings of an acknowledged science of war, the groundwork of both
being the theory and practice of antiquity. The present method of
"forming fours" in the British infantry is ultimately derived from
Aelian, just as the first beats of the drums in a march represent the
regimental calls of the Landsknechts, and the depots and the drafts for
the service battalions date from the Italian wars of Spain.