During his absence the panic spread.  The States’ troops, bewildered, astonished, vigorously assaulted, turned their backs upon their enemies, and fled helter-skelter towards the gates, through which they had first gained admittance.  But unfortunately for them, so soon as the corporal had left his position, the wounded old gate-opener, in a dying condition, had crawled forth on his hands and knees from a dark hole in the tower, cut, with a pocket-knife, the ropes of the portcullis, and then given up the ghost.  Most effective was that blow struck by a dead man’s hand.  Down came the portcullis.  The flying plunderers were entrapped.  Close behind them came the excited burghers—­their antique Belgic ferocity now fully aroused—­firing away with carbine and matchlock, dealing about them with bludgeon and cutlass, and led merrily on by Haultepenne and Elmont armed in proof, at the head of their squadron of lancers.  The unfortunate patriots had risen very early in the morning only to shear the wolf.  Some were cut to pieces in the streets; others climbed the walls, and threw themselves head foremost into the moat.  Many were drowned, and but a very few effected their escape.  Justinus de Nassau. sprang over the parapet, and succeeded in swimming the ditch.  Kleerhagen, driven into the Holy Cross tower, ascended to its .roof, leaped, all accoutred as he was, into the river, and with the assistance of a Scotch soldier, came safe to land.  Ferdinand Truchsess, brother of the ex-elector of Cologne, was killed.  Four or five hundred of the assailants—­nearly all who had entered the city—­were slain, and about fifty of the burghers.

Hohenlo soon came back, with Colonel Ysselstein, and two thousand fresh troops.  But their noses, says a contemporary, grew a hundred feet long with surprise when they saw the gate shut in their faces.  It might have occurred to the Count, when he rushed out of the town for reinforcements, that it would be as well to replace the guard, which—­as he must have seen—­had abandoned their post.

Cursing his folly, he returned, mavellously discomfited, and deservedly censured, to Gertruydenberg.  And thus had a most important enterprise; which had nearly been splendidly successful, ended in disaster and disgrace.  To the recklessness of the general, to the cupidity which he had himself awakened in his followers, was the failure alone to be attributed.  Had he taken possession of the city with a firm grasp at the head of his four thousand men, nothing could have resisted him; Haultepenne, and his insignificant force, would have been dead, or his prisoners; the basis of Parma’s magnificent operations would have been withdrawn; Antwerp would have been saved.

“Infinite gratitude,” wrote Parma to Philip, “should be rendered to the Lord.  Great thanks are also due to Haultepenne.  Had the rebels succeeded in their enterprise against Bolduc, I should have been compelled to abandon the siege of Antwerp.  The town; by its strength and situation, is of infinite importance for the reduction both of that place and of Brussels, and the rebels in possession of Bolduc would have cut off my supplies.”