The Dutch Read Free Page B

and let their own bowmen among them loose a few barrages of arrows, which sent many enemy foot soldiers retreating to the shelter of town. The Frisians did not return fire. The Count, over-confident of a quick victory, sent his entire force of knights and squires forward in a massive attack against the thinning ranks of seemingly retreating enemy infantry. With banners flying and armor shining in the morning sun, the Dutch nobles charged, only to quickly find their rapid advance and momentum slowed by the wet fields, which became muddy as they neared the lower lying town. The hoofs of their galloping horses sank deeply into the rain soaked earth, and their initial momentum slowed almost to a halt. A constant shower of arrows from Frisian archers, well positioned on the roofs of the town, began to thin the ranks of the Dutch knights and squires who became almost immobile in the quagmire of mud. At that exact moment, mounted Frisian knights began filtering out of the drier ground of the tree line, and formed for an assault on the flank of the now almost stationary line of stalled and muddied Dutch knights. It appeared this day would be a certain Frisian victory.
    The Baron, without awaiting orders from Albert, led his men into the foray targeting the Frisian knights forming for the assault on the hapless Dutch advance. He hesitated for but a moment, as a torch was passed among the ranks allowing those armed with the primitive firearms to light each gunnes’ tinder. The twenty horsemen armed with the traditional recurved bow of their ancestors were placed at the head of the formation to shower the Frisian formation with arrows as they slowly trotted toward the enemy. The lazy pace of the trotting advance allowed many to empty their quivers with good affect while the slower pace allowed Derick’s lighter horsemen to keep their footing. Their training allowed the formation to maintain a good configuration for what they were about to do. The Frisians, as Lord Derick anticipated, dispatched about forty knights to deal with what they perceived as a mere annoyance of rabble lightly armored commoners on horseback.
    This Frisian formation came charging within twenty yards of Derick’s cavalrymen when the archers slowed their horses allowing those with gunnes’ to the front. At twenty feet, Jacobus gave the command to fire and the gunnes were discharged as spontaneously as possible. This was the first use of firearms by cavalry in the Netherlands, and their foes, in chain mail, lacked the heavier plated armor needed for even modest protection against such weapons. The shock of those multiple small iron balls shattered the advancing line of well mounted knights, sending pieces of men and horses sailing into the air as the splattered blood of knights showered their squires riding to their rear. The noise of the discharge alone frightened the remaining enemy horses and riders who survived. The survivors immediately fled the field for they saw half their number killed in a single moment and had watched rider-less and wounded horses stamped in all directions.
    Every eye on the battlefield turned to that cloud of black gun smoke which, for a brief time, hid the now more rapid advance of the Baron’s own horsemen having discarded their gunnes and bows and drawn their swords. They charged the open flank of the startled main group of enemy knights near the tree line. The Droger Land’s short but heavy Germanic swords smashed the flank of the Frisians while their bucklers deflected the blades of any who attempted retaliation. The horror of what the main body of Frisian knights had witnessed, and the pressure brought by the force of the Baron’s sharp attack on their flank, caused the most important force of Frisians to flee the battlefield for the safety of the trees. It was Jacobus who halted the Droger Land unit at the tree line. The action by the Baron’s horsemen gave the Dutch knights the time needed to