The troop started.  After a few minutes’ march they were in full sight of Ostrawell.  They then displayed their flags and advanced upon the fort with loud huzzas.  Tholouse was as much taken by surprise as if they had suddenly emerged from the bowels of the earth.  He had been informed that the government at Brussels was in extreme trepidation.  When he first heard the advancing trumpets and sudden shouts, he thought it a detachment of Brederode’s promised force.  The cross on the banners soon undeceived him.  Nevertheless “like a brave and generous young gentleman as he was,” he lost no time in drawing up his men for action, implored them to defend their breastworks, which were impregnable against so small a force, and instructed them to wait patiently with their fire, till the enemy were near enough to be marked.

These orders were disobeyed.  The “young scholar,” as De Beauvoir had designated him, had no power to infuse his own spirit into his rabble rout of followers.  They were already panic-struck by the unexpected appearance of the enemy.  The Catholics came on with the coolness of veterans, taking as deliberate aim as if it had been they, not their enemies, who were behind breastworks.  The troops of Tholouse fired wildly, precipitately, quite over the heads of the assailants.  Many of the defenders were slain as fast as they showed themselves above their bulwarks.  The ditch was crossed, the breastwork carried at, a single determined charge.  The rebels made little resistance, but fled as soon as the enemy entered their fort.  It was a hunt, not a battle.  Hundreds were stretched dead in the camp; hundreds were driven into the Scheld; six or eight hundred took refuge in a farm-house; but De Beauvoir’s men set fire to the building, and every rebel who had entered it was burned alive or shot.  No quarter was given.  Hardly a man of the three thousand who had held the fort escaped.  The body of Tholouse was cut into a hundred pieces.  The Seigneur de Beauvoir had reason, in the brief letter which gave an account of this exploit, to assure her Highness that there were “some very valiant fellows in his little troop.”  Certainly they had accomplished the enterprise entrusted to them with promptness, neatness, and entire success.  Of the great rebellious gathering, which every day had seemed to grow more formidable, not a vestige was left.

This bloody drama had been enacted in full sight of Antwerp.  The fight had lasted from daybreak till ten o’clock in the forenoon, during the whole of which period, the city ramparts looking towards Ostrawell, the roofs of houses, the towers of churches had been swarming with eager spectators.  The sound of drum and trumpet, the rattle of musketry, the shouts of victory, the despairing cries of the vanquished were heard by thousands who deeply sympathized with the rebels thus enduring so sanguinary a chastisement.  In Antwerp there were forty thousand people opposed to the Church of Rome.  Of this number the greater proportion were Calvinists, and of these Calvinists there were thousands looking down from the battlements upon the disastrous fight.