The retaliatory methods of the Dutch served to enrage the Portuguese beyond all bearing. The Council of the Dutch West India Company issued a proclamation to the effect that all women and children in the towns, whose husbands and fathers were rebels, were to be evicted from their houses and left to fend for themselves. The idea seems to have been that these people would flock to the insurgents and thus hamper their movements. The result was that the unfortunate women and children were exposed to the mercy of the weather and the forests. Joao Fernandes had now collected a formidable number of men, and, posting these about nine leagues to the westward of Recife in a spot of great strategic advantage, he awaited the Dutch advance. One thousand five hundred Dutch troops, aided by a number of native auxiliaries, came on to the attack. Three times they advanced and drove the Portuguese and their Indian allies some way up the hill on the sides of which they were posted, but each time the Dutch lost more and more men from the ambushes in the thick cane-brake which covered the ground. In the end the Dutch retired, having suffered very severe casualties. It is said that 370 of their force were found dead upon the field. Beyond this a number died on the retreat, while many hundreds were wounded. The Portuguese assert that their army consisted of 1,200 whites, aided by about 100 Indians and negroes. This fight had very important consequences, since it enabled the Portuguese forces to arm themselves with the weapons left on the field by the dead and wounded Dutch. During all this time the authorities at Bahia had remained quiescent, since officially no state of war existed, and in the eyes of the Government the Dutch were supposed merely to be quelling some revolutionary movements ere they departed for Europe! Now the time came for this farce to be ended, and the Governor of Bahia sent troops to the north to join the insurgents in their struggle against the Dutch. The traitor Hoogstraten now definitely joined these forces, and the whole of the country south of Recife fell once more into the hands of the Portuguese. During this period the bitterness between the two armies was still further accentuated by the massacre of Portuguese by the Tapuya Indians at Cunhau. This atrocity, as a matter of fact, was perpetrated on the initiative of the Indians alone, but at the time the Dutch--unjustly, as it turned out--were blamed for it. This circumstance induced retaliation, and eventually caused many barbarous acts to be done on both sides.