These marching all night reached Antwerp at daybreak without interruption, and uniting with the force under the Marquis Bedmar, issued out 30,000 strong to attack Obdam.

Sending off detached columns, who moved round, and--unseen by the Dutch, who acted with as great carelessness as if their foes had been 500 miles away--he took possession of the roads on the dykes leading not only to Fort Lille on the Scheldt, but to Bergen op Zoom, and fell suddenly upon the Dutch army on all sides.
Scarcely had the messenger ridden into Eckeron, when a tremendous roar of musketry broke out in all quarters, and the desperate position into which the supineness of their general had suffered them to fall, was apparent to all.
In a few minutes the confusion was terrible.

Rupert and Hugh hastily saddled their horses, and had just mounted when General Obdam with twenty troopers rode past at full gallop.
"Where can he be going ?" Rupert said.

"He is not riding towards either of the points attacked." "It seems to me that he is bolting, Master Rupert, just flying by some road the French have not yet occupied." "Impossible!" Rupert said.
But it was so, and the next day the runaway general himself brought the news of his defeat to the League, announcing that he had escaped with thirty horse, and that the rest of his army was destroyed.

It is needless to say that General Obdam never afterwards commanded a Dutch army in the field.
The second part of the news which he brought the Hague was not correct.