not diminished. Soon afterwards, the war became more languid than ever.
News arrived of a great crisis on the Genoa exchange. A multitude of
merchants, involved in pecuniary transactions with Spinola, fell with
one tremendous crash. The funds of the Catholic commander-in-chief were
already exhausted, his acceptances could no longer be negotiated.

His credit was becoming almost as bad as the king's own. The inevitable
consequence of the want of cash and credit followed. Mutiny, for the
first time in Spinola's administration, raised its head once more, and
stalked about defiant. Six hundred veterans marched to Breda, and
offered their services to Justinus of Nassau. The proposal was accepted.
Other bands, established their quarters in different places, chose their
Elettos and lesser officers, and enacted the scenes which have been so
often depicted in these pages. The splendid army of Spinola melted like
April snow. By the last week of October there hardly seemed a Catholic
army in the field. The commander-in-chief had scattered such companies
as could still be relied upon in the villages of the friendly arch-
episcopate of Cologne, and had obtained, not by murders and blackmail--
according to the recent practice of the Admiral of Arragon, at whose grim
name the whole country-side still shuddered--but from the friendship of
the leading inhabitants and by honest loans, a sufficient sum to put
bread into the mouths of the troops still remaining faithful to him.

The opportunity had at last arrived for the stadholder to strike a blow
before the season closed. Bankruptcy and mutiny had reduced his enemy to
impotence in the very season of his greatest probable success. On the
24th October Maurice came before Lochem, which he recaptured in five
days. Next in the order of Spinola's victories was Groll, which the
stadholder at once besieged. He had almost fifteen thousand infantry and
three thousand horse. A career of brief triumph before winter should