We entered the town on the 5th, and next day, which was Sunday, the garrison was taken to the church, to attend divine service. The Dutch congregation had been dismissed; but their minister, and a number of others, remained, to be a witness of our service. The church was large, and of Gothic structure, and had the largest and most highly ornamented organ I ever saw. The enemy had received reinforcements the day before, and he commenced an attack upon the positions of the army, at the time we were in the church. The prayers of the liturgy had been read, and the minister had begun his sermon, when we began to hear the noise of cannon at a distance; by the time the sermon was ended, the firing of cannon had approached nearer the town and was beginning to be heavy, and the musketry was heard to mingle in the roar; and the large organ played Malbrouk as we left the church, to repair to our alarm posts. The action continued to be warmly contested, until after it was dark; but the enemy was repulsed, and fell back to his position, and one hundred and eighty-eight prisoners were taken, and brought into Alkmaar on the morning of the 7th. About two o'clock in the afternoon the prisoners were assembled, and a captain and forty men, of whom I was one, were appointed to escort them to our former head-quarters, on the north side of the long dyke. Only thirty of the prisoners were French; the others were Dutchmen, and had put up the orange cockade after they were made prisoners. Numbers of them had money, with which they procured gin before we left the town; and they drank and sung songs (which we believed were in praise of their former government), as we went along the road. The Frenchmen, who were enthusiastic republicans, scorned the Dutch for putting up the orange cockade, and kept by themselves, on the front of the party. We kept them all in good humour, and until the fatigue of travelling had exhausted our strength, the march of the prisoners resembled more the merry air of a wedding procession, than of that gloom which the thought of their being under an escort of their enemies, and on the way to a prison in a foreign land, might naturally be expected to produce. It continued to rain upon us the greater part of the way, this, with the deepness of the roads and the length of the journey, fatigued us exceedingly, and scattered us into parties; yet, notwithstanding of this, and although a great part of the journey was performed after it was dark, and although the prisoners were in their own country, none of them attempted to escape. When we had delivered them over to another guard, to watch them through the night, we retired to rest in the expectation of returning to Alkmaar next day, but we were surprised to hear in the morning, that the army was retreating; and in a few hours, the various divisions arrived and resumed the positions they had occupied previous to the battle of the 2d.