re they constructed a spacious
chamber, supporting it with columns, and making all their architectural
arrangements with as much precision and elegance as if their object had
been purely esthetic. Coffers full of powder, to an enormous amount, were
then placed in every direction across the floor, the train was laid, and
Parma informed that all was ready. Alexander, having already arrayed the
troops destined for the assault, then proceeded in person to the mouth of
the shaft, and gave orders to spring the mine. The explosion was
prodigious; a part of the tower fell with the concussion, and the moat
was choked with heaps of rubbish. The assailants sprang across the
passage thus afforded, and mastered the ruined portion of the fort. They
were met in the breach, however, by the unflinching defenders of the
city, and, after a fierce combat of some hours, were obliged to retire;
remaining masters, however, of the moat, and of the ruined portion of the
ravelin. This was upon the 3rd of April.

Five days afterwards, a general assault was ordered. A new mine having
been already constructed towards the Tongres ravelin, and a faithful
cannonade having been kept up for a fortnight against the Bois-le-Duc
gate, it was thought advisable to attack at both points at once. On the
8th of April, accordingly, after uniting in prayer, and listening to a
speech from Alexander Farnese, the great mass of the Spanish army
advanced to the breach. The moat had been rendered practicable in many
places by the heaps of rubbish with which it had been encumbered, and by
the fagots and earth with which it had been filled by the besiegers. The
action at the Bois-le-Duc gate was exceedingly warm. The tried veterans
of Spain, Italy, and Burgundy, were met face to face by the burghers of
Maestricht, together with their wives and children. All were armed to the
teeth, and fought with what seemed superhuman valor. The women, fierce as
tigresses defending their young, swarmed to the walls, and fought in the
foremost rank. They threw pails of boiling water on the besiegers, they
hurled firebrands in their faces; they quoited blazing pitch-hoops with,
unerring dexterity about their necks. The rustics too, armed with their
ponderous flails, worked as cheerfully at this bloody harvesting as if
thrashing their corn at home. Heartily did they winnow the ranks of the
royalists who came to butcher them, and thick and fast fell the invaders,
fighting bravely, but baffl