Given the impossibility of rescue of Goes by sea, 3,000 soldiers of the Spanish Tercios under the command of Cristóbal de Mondragón waded across the river Scheldt at its mouth, walking 15 miles overnight in water up to chest deep.

Captain Plomaert, a Fleming loyal to Spain, accompanied by two locals who knew the terrain well, studied the possibility of the Spanish troops fording the Oosterschelde on foot taking advantage of hours of low tide.

[2] On the evening of 20 October, Mondragón and his men, preceded by Plomaert and his guides, went into the river, each one equipped with a bag of gunpowder and provisions that they were to hold over the head or at the tip of their pikes throughout the crossing.

Shortly before dawn they reached the riverbank of Zuid-Beveland near Yerseke, at 20 km of Goes, having lost only nine men to drowning during the crossing of the river (a minute number of casualties compared to the danger of the task).

The Anglo-Dutch troops besieging the city, surprised by the Tercios, which they had expected to arrive at some port of the island, abandoned the siege and began a hurried retreat to their ships, pursued by the soldiers of Mondragón, which overtook their rear, inflicting over 800 casualties.