The city however withstood the siege and in the ten years campaign leading up to 1599 the States General of the Netherlands had captured the area, led by Maurice of Orange.

[10] In April 1599 the Spanish army stationed in Gelderland which was led by Francisco de Mendoza, the Admiral of Aragon was ordered by the Archduke of Austria to mount an offensive into the Bommelerwaard.

On April 17 the Archduke left a section of troops to cover the Rhine and two days later Mendoza's force marched to Schenkenschans with 12,000 infantry and cavalry along with a siege train.

[10] On 4 May, after the failure of the attack on Schenkenschanz, the Spanish moved around the fort and thus crossed the Meuse (Dutch: Maas) between Kessel and Theren, and invaded the island of Bommelerwaard.

Maurice exerted himself to hinder the progress of Fort San Andres with a bombardment; the Spanish though constructed two bastions towards the Waal, two towards the Maas, and a fifth inland, with connecting curtains with the rivers serving as a ditch.

[13] On June 24 a force under Count William Louis of Nassau and Sir Horace Vere crossed the river, and by break of day they had thrown up a crescent formation at Heerewaarden a short distance from San Andres.

The next day, 3,000 Spaniards and Italians encouraged by several monks, launched a furious assault on the half-moon, forced their way through the palisades, and fought hand-to-hand and at push of pike.

A Scottish colonel Murray, an ageing veteran of the Dutch revolt by this time, was killed when the English and Scots launched successful a counter-attack after the Spanish had fled from their camp.

[12] Maurice's engineers took fourteen flat bottomed ships that had supplied the army, stripped them of their rigging, then anchored them to a line crossing the Waal from a point east of Tuil to the harbour at Zaltbommel.

The military advantage gained here was incalculable[8] To prevent the Spanish from reaching the ship bridge and encircling from the West, Maurice then ordered the piercing of the dikes near Gameren thus flooding the countryside there.

Before he retreated Mendoza placed 3,000 men inside Fort San Andreas but less than a year later they were under siege by the Anglo-Dutch; they mutinied and were sold to Maurice for their arrears of pay.

[5] Worse was to follow with the disbandment; a series of mutinies occurred that forced any further Spanish operations to be put on hold as the States and English army now made a counter-offensive.

[4] The following year the Dutch senate led by Johan van Oldenbarneveldt saw the chaos in the Spanish army and decided the time was ripe for a focal point of the war to be concentrated in Catholic Flanders.