The two first adventures were destined to be signally unsuccessful.  A force under Seigneur de Cocqueville, latest of all, took the field towards the end of June.  It entered the bailiwick of Hesdin in Artois, was immediately driven across the frontier by the Count de Roeulx, and cut to pieces at St. Valery by Marechal de Cossis, governor of Picardy.  This action was upon the 18th July.  Of the 2500 men who composed the expedition, scarce 300 escaped.  The few Netherlanders who were taken prisoners were given to the Spanish government, and, of course, hanged.

The force under the Seigneur de Villars was earlier under arms, and the sooner defeated.  This luckless gentleman, who had replaced the Count of Hoogstraaten, crossed the frontier of Juliers; in the neighborhood of Maestricht, by the 20th April.  His force, infantry and cavalry, amounted to nearly three thousand men.  The object of the enterprise was to, raise the country; and, if possible, to obtain a foothold by securing an important city.  Roermonde was the first point of attack, but the attempts, both by stratagem and by force, to secure the town, were fruitless.  The citizens were not ripe for revolt, and refused the army admittance.  While the invaders were, therefore, endeavoring to fire the gates, they were driven off by the approach of a Spanish force.

The Duke, so soon as the invasion was known to him, had acted with great promptness.  Don Sancho de Lodrono and Don Sancho de Avila, with five vanderas of Spanish infantry, three companies of cavalry, and about three hundred pikemen under Count Eberstein, a force amounting in all to about 1600 picked troops, had been at once despatched against Villars.  The rebel chieftain, abandoning his attempt upon Roermonde, advanced towards Erkelens.  Upon the 25th April, between Erkelens and Dalem, the Spaniards came up with him, and gave him battle.  Villars lost all his cavalry and two vanderas of his infantry in the encounter.  With the remainder of his force, amounting to 1300 men, he effected his retreat in good order to Dalem.  Here he rapidly entrenched himself.  At four in the afternoon, Sancho de Lodrono, at the head of 600 infantry, reached the spot.  He was unable to restrain the impetuosity of his men, although the cavalry under Avila, prevented by the difficult nature of the narrow path through which the rebels had retreated, had not yet arrived.  The enemy were two to one, and were fortified; nevertheless, in half an hour the entrenchments were carried, and almost every man in the patriot army put to the sword.  Villars himself, with a handful of soldiers, escaped into the town, but was soon afterwards taken prisoner, with all his followers.  He sullied the cause in which he was engaged by a base confession of the designs formed by the Prince of Orange—­a treachery, however, which did not save him from the scaffold.  In the course of this day’s work, the Spanish lost twenty men, and the rebels nearly 200.  This portion of the liberating forces had been thus disastrously defeated on the eve of the entrance of Count Louis into Friesland.