With a force numbering only eight hundred, but all picked men, the intrepid officer undertook his enterprise, with great despatch and secrecy.  Upon the 12th March, the whole troop was sent off in small parties, to avoid suspicion, and armed only with sword and dagger.  Their helmets, bucklers, arquebusses, corselets, spears, standards and drums, were delivered to their officers, by whom they were conveyed noiselessly to the place of rendezvous.  Before daybreak, upon the following morning, De Beauvoir met his soldiers at the abbey of Saint Bernard, within a league of Antwerp.  Here he gave them their arms, supplied them with refreshments, and made them a brief speech.  He instructed them that they were to advance, with furled banners and without beat of drum, till within sight of the enemy, that the foremost section was to deliver its fire, retreat to the rear and load, to be followed by the next, which was to do the same, and above all, that not an arquebus should be discharged till the faces of the enemy could be distinguished.

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