If only the burghers had carried out my orders strictly, we should certainly have inflicted heavy losses on the English, even if we had not won a complete victory.
The English had not sent out their scouts sufficiently far in advance, and came riding on, suspecting nothing.

We occupied positions on the right and left of the road along which they were advancing, and my orders were that the burghers should let the troops get right between our ridges, which were about three hundred paces from each other, and then fire on them from both sides at once.
Instead of doing this, however, the burghers began to fire when the English were five hundred paces from them--before, that is to say, they had got anywhere near the door of the trap which I had set for them.
The enemy wheeled round, and galloped back for about fifteen hundred paces.

They then dismounted, and fired on us.

But, having no sort of cover, they were soon compelled to mount their horses again and retire to their guns, which were about three thousand yards from us.

These guns now opened a heavy fire upon our ridges; we replied with our three Krupps, with which we made such good practice that we might have been able to hold out there indefinitely, had not a Lyddite and an Armstrong gun happened just then to arrive from Heilbron, which lay about ten miles behind us.