IX
In September, when the gnats cease from biting, the Silent One, with six field guns and four great cannon to talk for him, and fourteen thousand Flemings, Walloons, and Germans, crossed the Rhine at Saint Vyt.
Under the yellow-and-red ensigns of the knotty staff of Burgundy, a staff that bruised our countries for long, the rod of the beginning of servitude that Alba wielded, the bloody duke, there marched twenty-six thousand five hundred men, and rumbled along seventeen field pieces and nine big guns.
But the Silent One was not to have any good success in this war, for Alba continually refused battle.
And his brother Ludwig, the Bayard of Flanders, after many cities won, and many ships held to ransom on the Rhine, lost at Jemmingen in Frisia to the duke’s son sixteen guns, fifteen hundred horses, and twenty ensigns, all through certain cowardly mercenary troops, who demanded money when it was the hour of battle.
And through ruin, blood, and tears, Ulenspiegel vainly sought the salvation of the land of our fathers.
And the executioners throughout the countries were hanging, beheading, burning the poor innocent victims.
And the king was inheriting.