a somewhat shaken confidence had just been restored.  When the Spanish attack was made, a large force of defenders was drawn up in battle array behind freshly strengthened fortifications.  When the French entered at leisure through a scarcely guarded gate, the whole population and garrison of the town were quietly eating their dinners.  The numbers of the invading forces on the two occasions did not materially differ; but at the time of the French Fury there was not a large force of regular troops under veteran generals to resist the attack.  Perhaps this was the main reason for the result, which seems at first almost inexplicable.  For protection against the Spanish invasion, the burghers relied on mercenaries, some of whom proved treacherous, while the rest became panic-struck.  On the present occasion the burghers relied on themselves.  Moreover, the French committed the great error of despising their enemy.  Recollecting the ease with which the Spaniards had ravished the city, they believed that they had nothing to do but to enter and take possession.  Instead of repressing their greediness, as the Spaniards had done, until they had overcome resistance, they dispersed almost immediately into by-streets, and entered warehouses to search for plunder.  They seemed actuated by a fear that they should not have time to rifle the city before additional troops should be sent by Anjou to share in the spoil.  They were less used to the sacking of Netherland cities than were the Spaniards, whom long practice had made perfect in the art of methodically butchering a population at first, before attention should be diverted to plundering, and supplementary outrages.  At any rate, whatever the causes, it is certain that the panic, which upon such occasions generally decides the fate of the day, seized upon the invaders and not upon the invaded, almost from the very first.  As soon as the marauders faltered in their purpose and wished to retreat, it was all over with them.  Returning was worse than advance, and it was the almost inevitable result that hardly a man escaped death or capture.

The Duke retreated the same day in the direction of Denremonde, and on his way met with another misfortune, by which an additional number of his troops lost their lives.  A dyke was cut by the Mechlin citizens to impede his march, and the swollen waters of the Dill, liberated and flowing across the country which he was to traverse, produced such an inundation, that at least a thousand of his followers were drowned.

As soon as he had established himself in a camp near Berghem, he opened a correspondence with the Prince of Orange, and with the authorities of Antwerp.  His language was marked by wonderful effrontery.  He found himself and soldiers suffering for want of food; he remembered that he had left much plate and valuable furniture in Antwerp; and he was therefore desirous that the citizens, whom he had so basely outraged, should at once send him supplies and restore his property.  He also reclaimed the prisoners who still remained in the city, and to obtain all this he applied to the man whom he had bitterly deceived, and whose life would have been sacrificed by the Duke, had the enterprise succeeded.