Thus encouraged, the Archduke gave the order to advance and the battle soon became general. The fate of the day was decided by the artillery of the Dutch which, by a fortunate order of their far-sighted commander, had been lifted off from the sand and mounted on platforms made from boughs, brush and such timber as was handy. That of the Archduke, mounted in haste directly on the beach, embedded itself in the sand at each discharge until it became useless, while that of the republicans became more accurate and deadly. At the same time the rays of the setting sun falling directly in the eyes of the Spanish soldiers, who were facing westward, blinded them and caused them to fire wildly. The Archduke performed prodigies of valour, having two horses killed under him and being himself slightly wounded, but as darkness began to fall on the bloody beach Count Maurice ordered a charge by a force of cavalry he had held in reserve. This fresh force proved irresistible, the Spanish lines began to give way on all sides, and the retreat quickly turned into a rout. Even the proud Archduke had to seek safety in flight, and the day, which had begun so auspiciously, ended in one of the greatest disasters of the disastrous war. Nieuport and its sister cities in this, until lately, half-forgotten corner of Flanders were, in former times, renowned for other contests happily less bloody than these famous battles. Here, during the Middle Ages, flourished a group of societies devoted to rhetoric. In place of the still more ancient tourneys, where armed knights fought with lance and sword, these "Chambers of Rhetoric" held annual contests of oratory. From one end of Flanders to the other the movement spread; and these debating societies did much to cultivate a regard for learning and dialectic skill among the mass of the population. Sternly suppressed by Alva, implacable foe of every form of free thought, these societies were revived after the Spanish scourge was withdrawn, and some of them continue to the present day. The visitor who wandered around the long, slightly hilly streets of the Nieuport of last July would have had little trouble in locating plenty of the "monuments" of its famous past, although the beach has now receded two or three miles to the northward and pleasant fields extend along the edge of the wide marshes which then were probably part of the sea. A curious old lighthouse with a pointed tower stands about midway between the present town and Nieuport _Bains_, as the beach town is called, showing where the coastline lay some three hundred and fifty years ago. Even this spot is now too far inland for the light to be seen at sea and a new lighthouse has been built on the rampart of dunes that runs, like a miniature mountain range, almost to Ostende toward the east, and westward to Coxyde and beyond. [Illustration: TOWER OF THE TEMPLARS, NIEUPORT.]