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THE BRITISH ARMY ON THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE. 
and battle-axes, Boer laagers, and last, not least, the primitive sling and stone of 
the Huguenot war at close of the XVI. century. The Arm which did it was that 
of gunpowder. The Man was Alva, who through sixty years of continuous war¬ 
fare never suffered a defeat, never met with a surprise ; who cut through Hungary, 
humbled Don Jon of Austria, drove the Trench out of all Italy, conquered the 
Tontificial States, conquered Portugal, subdued Spain, and made of the whole 
Netherlands a howling wilderness, leaving only a small corner of Holland and 
Zealand as a buttress against this Dictator of Europe; who, by his brutal per¬ 
secutions of the protestants, gave to England the thousands of Walloons and 
Tlemings who laid the foundation of our international supremacy in the commercial 
industries and in the mechanical arts and sciences. We owe also to Alva’s sieges 
the lesson of the immense superiority of shell fire, over solid shot of whatever 
calibres, even with such crude weapons as bombs and hand grenades. 
That martial planet passed away on the eve of the Armada which he had 
contemplated, and for one hundred years Europe could gaze only at his satellites 
Spinola, Prince Maurice, and Turenne. Tor one hundred years Europe had to 
wait for another planet, Marlborough , whose satellites were Triedrich, Napoleon 
and Wellington. 
“ The Invincible Armada” has necessarily been but slightly alluded to by the 
lecturer who, however, rightly discriminated naval actions of the period as those 
of Sea Armies —for there were not then Navies in the modern sense of the term, 
ships of war being like unto country houses waiting for occupation by their 
owners ; and were not complete until a land army was embarked, the land General 
becoming the sea Admiral. In absence of an “Army Becords Society ” corres¬ 
ponding to the “Navy Pecords Society,” or even a Chair of Military History in our 
military academy, such lectures as these of Dr. Maguire must continue to be our 
classics ; but, from the State Papers of Queen Elizabeth which have been recently 
published by the Navy Pecords Society, in Yols. I. II., three facts have been 
elicited : (1) that from beginning to end of the Armada not one English ship 
boarded an undisabled Spaniard; (2) that the English ships kept beyond musketry 
range of the undisabled Spaniards ; (3) that of the entire Armada about one 
third was destroyed by the elements, one third was disabled or sunk in action, 
and the remainder escaped to Spain because our artillery gunpowder had become 
exhausted. Will the lecturer, therefore, now display sufficient personal courage 
to risk being “ swung up to the yard-arm ” by deciding to which of the three 
arms is due the effective credit of the active defeat of the Invincible Armada ? 
The year 1600 opened with the Charter to the East India Company, which 
forms an epoch in arms because one clause gave to England a virtual monopoly in 
Asiatic saltpetre , infinitely superior to the productions of Europe or Britain ; and, 
almost simultaneously, came our invention by one of our Tlemish exiles of the 
process of refining saltpetre—the effect of which was to almost double the range 
and efficacy of English gunpowdei arms, both great and small, which enabled us 
to defeat the Trench, Dutch and Spanish navies and to render England mistress 
of the seas. 
In 1624, the celebrated siege of Breda —around which the princes and engineers 
of Europe gathered—was not only a remarkable illustration of Dr. Maguire’s 
contention of the prowess of British soldiers in the wars of the continent, but it 
is for all time memorable in the history of arms. On the one side was the 
catholic army of Spain, commanded by Spinola, whose right consisted of the Irish 
army under the Earl of Tyrone, with the Irish artillery train under Captain Barry 
the historian : on the other, the army of the Dutch protestants, commanded by 
Prince Maurice, "whose right consisted of 20,000 English under Lord Vere of 
Tilbury, the then Master-General of the Ordnance (15,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry 
