Thyellene

The Battle on the Heath On 24 January 1597, the ‘Tielenheide’ - a stretch of moorland near the Belgian village of Tielen, south of Turnhout-was the scene of a great battle. Prince Maurice of Nassau, commander of the Dutch army,crushingly defeated Count Varax, a Burgundian general of the Spanish army.

In military circles, the Battle of Turnhout caused quite a stir: a Spanish army of five thousand men was initially held up for hours through daring shortmoves by fifteen cavalrymen and a few hundred foot-soldiers -and subsequently, this Spanish army was overpowered by barely a thousand cavalrymen, without the help of the infantrymen. New weaponry proved its value that day. The Dutch cavalrymen were not armed with spears, as previously, but with long, carbine-like pistols.

Before the pikemen of the Spanish army could stick their fearsome, six-metre-long spears into the ground to protect themselves against the onrushing horses, they were shot to pieces or knocked down. During the battle, the state troops seized a number of flags, which would embellish the Ridderzaal (Knights’ Hall) in The Hague for years. In a contemporary Dutch military magazine, the victory at the ‘Tielenheide’ has been described as “ the heaviest blow ever delivered by the Dutch cavalry”.

The location where the battle took place is no langer moorland: it is now a pine forestplanted more than a century age, to meet the demand for wood in the old coalmines of Limburg. Part of the forest is now the military territory of the Third Paratroop Batallion, and part is now the De Waal nature reserve: it isnot accessible to the public. In Tielen there is still a street called the Tielenheide, near the former moorland.