On the night of the 7th, therefore, the bridge was repaired sufficiently to enable the garrison to evacuate the place; and the troops filed across the river. Two Dutch battalions were the last to leave the place under the Dutch General Haak, who, most improperly, was the first man of his nation to set foot on the bridge. As he did so, a shot struck one of the pontoons with some effect, whereupon he immediately ran across the bridge crying out that all was lost, and reported with shameless mendacity that all his troops had passed over except the rear-guard. Upon this the pontoon-bridge was immediately fired, since a flying bridge had already been prepared for the passage of the rear-guard. As luck would have it, however, a shot from the French batteries cut the hawser; the flying bridge began to swing round; and, to save it from running foul of the kindled boats, the sailors dropped the anchor and so brought it up. When the burning pontoons had floated away, some British seamen, who were employed on the bridge, were for cutting it adrift, but the Dutchmen would not allow them to do so, preferring certain capture to the risk of a few cannon-shot. Thus eleven hundred of them were taken, either through their own cowardice or through that of Haak—a lamentable occurrence in an army which in the past had approved itself to be of incomparable steadfastness and valour.[284] The Duke, therefore, now held the line of the Waal including the Bommeler Waert, and might well hope to hold it, if the Dutch did their duty, until the army went into winter quarters. He had already put most of his cavalry into cantonments across the Yssel, but the Dutch threw every possible obstacle in the way of providing for the comfort of the troops. The weather too grew wintry, and the men, miserably clothed and housed in open barns, began to fall down very fast from cold and typhus fever. None of them had greatcoats except some of the Guards, Fourteenth, Thirty-seventh, and Fifty-third, who had received those which had been provided by public subscription in 1793, and which were now worn out. Flannel waistcoats had been supplied to the rest by their officers, who had subscribed over a thousand pounds for the purpose; and it appears that, without exaggeration, they had little other clothing. Sheer nakedness, in fact, had been the cause of much, though not of all, of the plundering that had disgraced the army; and this evil had been aggravated by the bitter hostility of the inhabitants towards the British. Not content with resenting real outrages, which were far too abundant, they never ceased flying to the Duke with frivolous and groundless complaints; and so disobliging were the authorities that Lord St. Helens, Ambassador at the Hague, tried for two months in vain to find places where the British might be allowed to establish additional hospitals. ◆Nov. 27.◆ On the 27th of November the infantry in British pay numbered twenty-one thousand and