Harry decided to post twenty-five men behind these quagmires.  Their orders would be to remain perfectly quiet until the column, passing the first morass, should have entered the second; then, when Harry, with the main body, opened fire upon them there, they were to commence upon the flanks of the column.

Returning to the camp, Harry sent forty men with shovels, obtained in the village, to dig a trench, twelve feet wide, and as deep as they could get for the water, across the track, at the near side of the morass.

At nightfall, leaving twenty-five men under William Long in front of the castle, with orders to let none issue forth, and to shoot down any who might make the attempt, Harry marched out with the rest of his command.  Crossing the ditch which had been dug, he led fifty forward, and posted them, as he had planned with Leslie; with twenty-five, he took up his own station behind the breastwork formed by the earth thrown out from the trench.  The remaining fifty he bade advance as far as they safely could into the swamp on either side.  Two hours later a dull sound was heard, the occasional clink of arms, and the muffled tread of many feet on the soft ground.  The Roundhead infantry, two hundred strong, led the way, followed by their horse, the guide walking with the officer at the head of the column.  When it approached within twenty yards of the ditch Harry gave the word, and a flash of fire streamed from the top of the earthwork.  At the same moment those on either side opened fire into the flanks of the column, while the fifty men beyond poured their fire into the cavalry in the rear of the column.

For a moment all was confusion.  The Roundheads had anticipated no attack, and were taken wholly by surprise.  The guide had fallen at the first discharge and all were ignorant of the ground on which they found themselves.  They were, however, trained to conflict.  Those on the flank of the column endeavored to penetrate the morass, but they immediately sank to the middle, and had much ado to regain the solid track.  The head of the column, pouring a volley into their invisible foes, leveled their pikes, and rushed to the assault.  A few steps, and they fell into a deep hole, breast high with water, and on whose slippery bottom their feet could scarce find standing.  In vain they struggled forward.  From front and flank the fire of their enemy smote them.  Those who reached the opposite side of the trench were run through with pikes as they strove to climb from it.

For ten minutes the desperate struggle continued, and then, finding the impossibility of storming such a position in the face of foes of whose strength they were ignorant, the Roundhead infantry turned, and in good order marched back, leaving half their number dead behind them.  The cavalry in the rear had fared but little better.  Finding the ground on either side was firm when the fire opened on their flanks, they faced both ways, and charged.  But ere the horses had gone twenty strides they were struggling to their girths in the morass.  Their foes kept up a steady fire, at forty yards’ distance, into the struggling mass, and before they could extricate themselves and regain the pathway, many leaving their horses behind, a third of their number had fallen.  Joined by the beaten infantry, they retired across the track, and made their way back toward their camp.