In 1349-1350 William of Bavaria attempted to become count of Holland and Zeeland without keeping the conditions his mother Margaret, Countess of Hainaut had demanded.

[2] Delft, a number of other cities north of the Hollandse IJssel and some nobles formed an alliance later known as the Cod faction.

In late March or early April Margaret then left for the (English) city of Calais to gather support from England.

Of the cities in Holland some, like Delft, Haarlem, Leiden, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Schiedam were fierce supporters of William.

Margaret's Hook side was supported by the small cities Gouda and Schoonhoven and held Geertruidenberg.

He was Lord of the recently fortified small city of Veere and resided on the nearby castle Zandenburg.

The idea was that he would use force to take control in Holland, Zeeland and Friesland, and would be compensated by getting temporary custody of the area.

Edward III of England was married to Margaret's sister Philippa of Hainault, and therefore had some pretention to possibly inherit Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut.

[13] As these people were meeting in Calais, Margaret received news that on 16 April William had been recognized as count by Dordrecht.

Wolfert III van Borselen, lord of Veere was assembling an army near Middelburg, and had invited William to come over.

Margaret now hurried northwards to the now disappeared city of Reimerswaal, on the southern bank of the Eastern Scheldt.

[8] In an old chronicle printed in 1517 the battle was described as follows: She (Margaret) collected a choice army to fight against her own son.

The queen of England also sent her sister a good army, carefully selected and experienced in the art of war.

[16] From his side Duke (i.e. count) William collected many soldiers in Holland, and on ships, these arrived in Zeeland to fight his mother.

[16] A credible, but vague description is in the medieval parchment recovered by Van den Bergh.

[15] After joining forces at Reimerswaal, Margaret and Louis attempted to do battle with Wolfert van Borselen.

Johannes de Beke's almost contemporary Chronicle of the County of Holland and Bishopric of Utrecht is one of these.

[22][23] In 1838 Laurens Philippe Charles van den Bergh started an investigation of the archives in Lille, France.

Verhaal van den oorsprong der Hoeksche en Kabeljauwsche twisten.

[8] The unknown author of Van den Bergh states that after the battle, Margaret and Louis went to Zierikzee.

Afterwards they sent Walther de Manny, d'Enghien and Estievene Mauleon to Middelburg to summon the city to submit.

However, in essence she still had to act quickly if she wanted to save her remaining Hook allies in Holland.