Many a time and oft did my grandfather sing the praises of Prince Maurice of Nassau, whom he loved as a man, revered as a prince, and admired as a warrior. He told me that this stout and worthy Prince had studied the art of war from a boy up, and made many innovations in the practice thereof, for the which this age is to him much beholden; namely, he armed his horsemen with the carbine instead of the lance, and taught his soldiers the true use of the spade in siege work. Before his time men of war were wont to scorn that humble tool, and to look upon such as handled it as boors and rascals. My grandfather was with him in the three months’ siege of Groningen, and beheld with admiration the work of his sappers and miners, how they drove mines in the shape of the letter Y beneath the walls of the city, and springing them one night, the north ravelin was blown up into the air with forty of the garrison, of whom one was cast alive and sound at his very feet in the besiegers’ camp. He told me too how in the summer of the year 1595, he came very near to losing his life. Prince Maurice had raised the siege of Grol, drawing back before the troops of Christopher Mondragon, a little old man of ninety-two, who had practised war from his youth, yet without receiving a wound. The Prince laid an ambush for this marvellous warrior, and set his cousin Philip to accomplish it; but the old man heard of what was toward, and took measures to counter it, so that when, about daybreak, Count Philip sent forward a handful of men to pounce upon the enemy’s pickets, they saw themselves faced by a great number of Spanish horsemen drawn up in order. Whereof when tidings were conveyed to Count Philip, he donned his casque, and drew his sword, and putting spurs to his horse, galloped into the lane that divided him from the Spaniards, being followed at the first only by four of his nobles, and then by others of his horsemen, among whom my grandfather was one. And when they were shut in that narrow pass, up started the Spaniards on the watery pasture lands on either hand, and fired their guns at them very hotly. Count Philip was shot through the body from a harquebus, which, by reason of its closeness, set his clothes a-fire, and the flames could not be quenched save by rolling him, all wounded as he was, among the sand and heather. When he sought to mount his horse and ride away, his strength failed him, and he fell to the ground and was taken prisoner and carried away dying. My grandfather, following in the charge, was thrown from his horse in the disorder and confusion, and only saved himself by crawling through the hedge, and swimming the river that ran by the margin of the field.