All the most eminent grandees of the provinces, Orange, Aerschot, Berlaymont, Meghen, Brederode, were present with the troops, but the life and soul of the army, upon this memorable occasion, was the Count of Egmont.
Lamoral, Count of Egmont, Prince of Gavere, was now in the thirty-sixth year of his age, in the very noon of that brilliant life which was destined to be so soon and so fatally overshadowed.

Not one of the dark clouds, which were in the future to accumulate around him, had yet rolled above his horizon.

Young, noble, wealthy, handsome, valiant, he saw no threatening phantom in the future, and caught eagerly at the golden opportunity, which the present placed within his grasp, of winning fresh laurels on a wider and more fruitful field than any in which he had hitherto been a reaper.

The campaign about to take place was likely to be an imposing, if not an important one, and could not fail to be attractive to a noble of so ardent and showy a character as Egmont.

If there were no lofty principles or extensive interests to be contended for, as there certainly were not, there was yet much that was stately and exciting to the imagination in the warfare which had been so deliberately and pompously arranged.