The twelve years' truce gave the English regiments a rest which, though not wholly unbroken, left some of the more daring spirits free for other adventure. The cause of the Elector Frederick, a prince less interesting to the English as the Winter King than as the husband of their favourite Princess Elizabeth, called Horace Vere and many another gallant gentleman with four thousand good soldiers into the Palatinate, where however their bravery could not avail to save them from inevitable failure. King James of course had no part in the venture; so far from moving a finger in aid of the Protestant cause in Germany, he even conspired secretly with Spain for a partition of the Netherlands, which was to be effected by the English troops in the Dutch service, the very men who had made the cause of the United Provinces their own and had carried it through the perils of Nieuport and Ostend. It is hardly surprising that such a man should, not indeed without searching of heart but without stirring a hand, have suffered Germany to drift into the Thirty Years War. [Sidenote: 1621.] [Sidenote: 1624.] [Sidenote: 1625-1637.] The lapse of the twelve years' truce found a large contingent of English under the command of Sir Edward Cecil attached to the army of Prince Maurice; and three years later the final breach of England with Spain increased its number from six to twelve thousand, and in 1625 even to seventeen thousand men. It would be tedious to follow them through the operations of the ensuing campaigns; it must suffice to call attention to the rise of men who were to become famous in later days and thus bridge over by a few stepping-stones the connection of the British army with the old Dutch schools of war. The first names are those of Philip Skippon, whom we find wounded before Breda in 1625, and of Captain John Cromwell, a kinsman of the great Oliver, who was also wounded in the same action. Coming next to the siege of Bois le Duc in 1629 we find the list far longer--Lord Doncaster, Lord Fielding, who trailed a pike in Cecil's regiment, Lord Craven, a Luttrell, a Bridgeman, a Basset, a Throgmorton, a Fleetwood, a Lambert, a second Cromwell, Thomas Fairfax, Philip Skippon, Jacob Astley, Thomas Culpeper, the veterans Balfour and Sandilands from north of the Tweed, and many more. Lastly, at the siege of Breda in 1637 we see Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, sons of the Winter King, as forward in the trenches as any needy cadet could be, working side by side with Philip Skippon, Lord Warwick, and George Goring. Of these Skippon and Goring divided the honours of the siege. Skippon at a post of extreme danger drove off two hundred Spaniards at push of pike with thirty English; he was struck by five bullets on helmet and corselet and at last shot through the neck, but he merely sat down for ten minutes and returned to his work until recalled by the Prince of Orange. Goring in the extreme advanced