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.

As early as the 22d April, Alva had been informed, by the lieutenant-governor of that province, that the beggars were mustering in great force in the neighborhood of Embden.  It was evident that an important enterprise was about to be attempted.  Two days afterwards, Louis of Nassau entered the provinces, attended by a small body of troops.  His banners blazed with patriotic inscriptions.  ’Nunc aut nunquam, Recuperare aut mori’, were the watchwords of his desperate adventure:  “Freedom for fatherland and conscience” was the device which was to draw thousands to his standard.  On the western wolds of Frisia, he surprised the castle of Wedde, a residence of the absent Aremberg, stadholder of the province.  Thence he advanced to Appingadam, or Dam, on the tide waters of the Dollart.  Here he was met by, his younger brother, the gallant Adolphus, whose days were so nearly numbered, who brought with him a small troop of horse.  At Wedde, at Dam, and at Slochteren, the standard was set up.  At these three points there daily gathered armed bodies of troops, voluntary adventurers, peasants with any rustic weapon which they could find to their hand.  Lieutenant-governor Groesbeck wrote urgently to the Duke, that the beggars were hourly increasing in force; that the leaders perfectly understood their game; that they kept their plans a secret, but were fast seducing the heart of the country.