English were stronger men, better riders, better mounted, and better
armed. The Spaniards hated helmets and proof armour, while the English
trooper, in casque, cuirass, and greaves, was a living fortress
impregnable to Spanish or Italian light horsemen. And Leicester seemed
almost convinced by his reasoning.

It was five o'clock of a chill autumn morning. It was time for day to
break, but the fog was so thick that a man at the distance of five yards
was quite invisible. The creaking of waggon-wheels and the measured
tramp of soldiers soon became faintly audible however to Sir John Norris
and his five hundred as they sat there in the mist. Presently came
galloping forward in hot haste those nobles and gentlemen, with their
esquires, fifty men in all--Sidney, Willoughby, and the rest--whom
Leicester had no longer been able to restrain from taking part in the
adventure.

A force of infantry, the amount of which cannot be satisfactorily
ascertained, had been ordered by the Earl to cross the bridge at a later
moment. Sidney's cornet of horse was then in Deventer, to which place it
had been sent in order to assist in quelling an anticipated revolt, so
that he came, like most of his companions, as a private volunteer and
knight-errant.

The arrival of the expected convoy was soon more distinctly heard, but
no scouts or outposts had been stationed to give timely notice, of the
enemy's movements. Suddenly the fog, which had shrouded the scene so
closely, rolled away like a curtain, and in the full light of an October
morning the Englishmen found themselves face to face with a compact body
of more than three thousand men. The Marquis del Vasto rode at the head
of the forces surrounded by a band of mounted arquebus men. The cavalry,