put to the
sword. The reply to this threat was not evacuation but defiance.
Especially a volunteer ensign mounted upon a rampart, and danced about,
waving his flag gaily in the face of the assailants. Maurice bitterly
remarked to his staff that such a man alone was enough to hold the fort.
As it was obvious that the place would require a siege in form, and that
it would be almost impossible to establish batteries upon that quaking
soil, where there was no dry land for cavalry or artillery to move,
Maurice ordered the nine guns to be carried back to Cadzand that night,
betaking himself, much disappointed, in the same direction. Yet it so
happened that the cannoneers, floundering through the bogs, made such an
outcry--especially when one of their guns became so bemired that it was
difficult for them to escape the disgrace of losing it--that the
garrison, hearing a great tumult, which they could not understand, fell
into one of those panics to which raw and irregular troops are liable.
Nothing would convince them that fresh artillery had not arrived, that
the terrible stadholder with an immense force was not creating invincible
batteries, and that they should be all butchered in cold blood, according
to proclamation, before the dawn of day. They therefore evacuated the
place under cover of the night, so that this absurd accident absolutely
placed Maurice in possession of the very fort--without striking a
blow--which he was about to abandon in despair, and which formed the
first great obstacle to his advance.

Having occupied St. Catharine's, he moved forward to Ysendyke, a strongly
fortified place three leagues to the eastward of Sluys and invested it in
form. Meantime a great danger was impending over him. A force of
well-disciplined troops, to the number of two thousand, dropped down in
boats from Sluy's to Cadzand, for the purpose of surprising the force
left to guard that important place.

The expedition was partially successful. Six hundred landed; beating down
all opposition. But a few Scotch companies held firm, and by hard
fighting were able at last to drive the invaders back to their sloops,
many of which were sunk in the affray, with all on board. The rest
ignominiously retreated. Had the enterprise been as well executed as it
was safely planned, it would have gone hard with the stadholder and his
army. It is difficult to see in what way he could have extricated himself
from such a dilemma, being thus cut off f