The first encounter at which Berwick was present, between those two valetudinary warriors who ought both have been at home with their feet in warm water, was at Steinkerk where William came near scrambling a victory by a stratagem. He had seized one of Luxembourg’s spies and had forced him to write false intelligence to him. Luxembourg was deceived, and before he knew it the English were upon him; but so promptly did he throw his troops into order of battle that after an engagement which was surpassed in bloody obstinacy only by the one that followed, the victory remained to him. The next year these two generals met at Landen or Neerwinden. The battle takes both names from two towns held by the English at the beginning of it. Landen, says Macaulay, was the most terrible battle of the seventeenth century. Berwick says he himself was chosen by Luxembourg to open the ball. At the head of four battalions he marched upon Neerwinden. He forced the English lines and drove them back into the town. But they rallied; Berwick’s four battalions were broken up, and he was left almost alone. He tore the trappings off his uniform, and by speaking English hoped to pass for an English officer till he could escape. But he was recognized, and gave up his sword to one of his Churchill uncles a brother of Marlborough. The awful carnage of this awful battle then centered around Neerwinden. The French were repulsed time and again. At last the household troops of King Louis were brought up to the attack. At their head was the king’s nephew Philip duke of Chartres, afterwards duke of Orleans, afterwards Regent of France. These soldiers had turned the tide at Steinkerk, and now once more they maintained their high reputation: The English were driven out. Macaulay says:--“At Landen two poor, sickly beings were the soul of two great armies. It is probable that among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers marshalled around Neerwinden, the two feeblist in body were the hunchback dwarf who urged forward the fiery onset of France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of England.” Quite picturesque, that! but the truth is William covered no retreat slow or fast: he covered nothing but his horse and to him he applied both spurs: it was the best he could do. Before he fled William had summoned his cousin Berwick before him. He told him he should send him to England to be tried for high-treason--He, a born Englishman in arms against his native country! This purpose was quite worthy of the signer of the warrant for the massacre of Glencoe; but it was frustrated as follows: