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. The army of the Netherlands
was now 22,000 strong, of whom 2000 were cavalry. It was well
disciplined, well equipped, and regularly paid, and was soon to
prove that the pains bestowed upon it had not been thrown away.
In the course of eighteen years that had followed the capture of
Brill and the commencement of the struggle with Spain, the wealth
and prosperity of Holland had enormously increased. The Dutch were
masters of the sea coast, the ships of the Zeelanders closed every
avenue to the interior, and while the commerce of Antwerp, Ghent,
Bruges, and the other cities of the provinces that remained in
the hands of the Spaniards was for the time destroyed, and their
population fell off by a half, Holland benefited in proportion.
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