On the landward side the town was protected by a wall and moat sufficiently strong in those infant days of artillery.

Near the hospital-gate, on the east, was an external fortress guarding the road to Warnsfeld.

This was a small village, with a solitary slender church-spire, shooting up above a cluster of neat one-storied houses.

It was about an English mile from Zutphen, in the midst of a wide, low, somewhat fenny plain, which, in winter, became so completely a lake, that peasants were not unfrequently drowned in attempting to pass from the city to the village.

In summer, the vague expanse of country was fertile and cheerful of aspect.