The combat lasted but a few minutes, the patriots were soon routed, and fled precipitately back to their camp.  The panic spread with them, and the whole army was soon in retreat.  On retiring, they had, however, set fire to the bridges, and thus secured an advantage at the outset of the chase.  The Spaniards were no longer to be held.  Vitelli obtained permission to follow with 2000 additional troops.  The fifteen hundred who had already been engaged, charged furiously upon their retreating foes.  Some dashed across the blazing bridges, with their garments and their very beards on fire.  Others sprang into the river.  Neither fire nor water could check the fierce pursuit.  The cavalry dismounting, drove their horses into the stream, and clinging to their tails, pricked the horses forward with their lances.  Having thus been dragged across, they joined their comrades in the mad chase along the narrow dykes, and through the swampy and almost impassable country where the rebels were seeking shelter.  The approach of night, too soon advancing, at last put an end to the hunt.  The Duke with difficulty recalled his men, and compelled them to restrain their eagerness until the morrow.  Three hundred of the patriots were left dead upon the field, besides at least an equal number who perished in the river and canals.  The army of Louis was entirely routed, and the Duke considered it virtually destroyed.  He wrote to the state council that he should pursue them the next day, but doubted whether he should find anybody to talk with him.  In this the Governor-general soon found himself delightfully disappointed.

Five days later, the Duke arrived at Reyden, on the Ems.  Owing to the unfavorable disposition of the country people, who were willing to protect the fugitives by false information to their pursuers, he was still in doubt as to the position then occupied by the enemy.  He had been fearful that they would be found at this very village of Reyden.  It was a fatal error on the part of Count Louis that they were not.  Had he made a stand at this point, he might have held out a long time.  The bridge which here crossed the river would have afforded him a retreat into Germany at any moment, and the place was easily to be defended in front.  Thus he might have maintained himself against his fierce but wary foe, while his brother Orange, who was at Strasburg watching the progress of events, was executing his own long-planned expedition into the heart of the Netherlands.  With Alva thus occupied in Friesland, the results of such an invasion might have been prodigious.  It was, however, not on the cards for that campaign.  The mutinous disposition of the mercenaries under his command had filled Louis with doubt and disgust.  Bold and sanguine, but always too fiery and impatient, he saw not much possibility of paying his troops any longer with promises.  Perhaps he was not unwilling to place them in a position where they would be obliged to fight or to perish.  At any rate, such was