Three captains were publicly beheaded in Brussels
and a fourth degraded to the ranks, while Lanzavecchia was deprived of
the command of Gertruydenberg.
For some months before the assault upon Breda the army of Holland had
been gaining vastly in strength and organization. Prince Maurice, aided
by his cousin Lewis William, stadholder of Friesland, had been hard at
work getting it into a state of efficiency. Lewis William, a man of
great energy and military talent, saw that the use of solid masses of
men in the field was no longer fitted to a state of things when the
improvements in firearms of all sorts had entirely changed the
condition of war. He therefore reverted to the old Roman methods, and
drilled his soldiers in small bodies; teaching them to turn and wheel,
advance or retreat, and perform all sorts of manoeuvres with regularity
and order. Prince Maurice adopted the same plan in Holland, and the
tactics so introduced proved so efficient that they were sooner or
later adopted by all civilized nations.
At the time when William of Orange tried to relieve the hard-pressed
city of Haarlem, he could with the greatest difficulty muster three or
four thousand men for the purpose.
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