Those very cavalry men, who had remained all day cowering behind the walls of the city, seeing by the clouds of dust which marked the track of the fugitives that the battle had been won by the comrades whom they had so basely deserted in the morning, had been eager enough to join in the pursuit.  It was with difficulty that the States, who had been unable to drive them out of the town while the fight was impending or going on, could keep enough of them within the walls to guard the city against possible accident, now that the work was done.  Even had they taken the field a few hours earlier, without participating in the action, or risking their own lives, they might have secured the pass of Leffingen, and made the capture of the archduke or his destruction inevitable.

The city, which had seemed deserted, swarmed with the garrison and with the lately trembling burghers, for it seemed to all as if they had been born again.  Even the soldiers on the battle-field had embraced each other like comrades who had met in another world.  “Blessed be His holy name,” said the stadholder’s chaplain, “for His right hand has led us into hell and brought us forth again.  I know not,” he continued, “if I am awake or if I dream, when I think how God has in one moment raised us from the dead.”

Lewis Gunther, whose services had been so conspicuous, was well rewarded.  “I hope,” said that general, writing to his brother Lewis William, “that this day’s work will not have been useless to me, both for what I have learned in it and for another thing.  His Excellency has done me the honour to give me the admiral for my prisoner.”  And equally characteristic was the reply of the religious and thrifty stadholder of Friesland.

“I thank God,” he said, “for His singular grace in that He has been pleased to make use of your person as the instrument of so renowned and signal a victory, for which, as you have derived therefrom not mediocre praise, and acquired a great reputation, it should be now your duty to humble yourself before God, and to acknowledge that it is He alone who has thus honoured you . . . .  You should reverence Him the more, that while others are admonished of their duty by misfortunes and miseries, the good God invites you to His love by benefits and honours . . . .  I am very glad, too, that his Excellency has given you the admiral for your prisoner, both because of the benefit to you, and because it is a mark of your merit on that day.  Knowing the state of our affairs, you will now be able to free your patrimony from encumbrances, when otherwise you would have been in danger of remaining embarrassed and in the power of others.  It will therefore be a perpetual honour to you that you, the youngest of us all, have been able by your merits to do more to raise up our house out of its difficulties than your predecessors or myself have been able to do.”

The beautiful white horse which the archduke had ridden during the battle fell into the hands of Lewis Gunther, and was presented by him to Prince Maurice, who had expressed great admiration of the charger.  It was a Spanish horse, for which the archduke had lately paid eleven hundred crowns.