camp.
Immense was the rejoicing. Triumphant salutes from eighty-seven cannon
and many thousand muskets shook the earth and excited bewilderment and
anxiety within the walls of the city. Almost immediately afterwards a
tremendous cannonade was begun and so vigorously sustained that the
burghers, and part of the garrison, already half rebellious with hatred
to Balagny, began loudly to murmur as the balls came flying into their
streets. A few days later an insurrection broke out. Three thousand
citizens, with red flags flying, and armed to the teeth were discovered
at daylight drawn up in the market place. Balagny came down from the
citadel and endeavoured to calm the tumult, but was received with
execrations. They had been promised, shouted the insurgents, that every
road about Cambray was to swarm with French soldiers under their
formidable king, kicking the heads of the Spaniards in all directions.
And what had they got? a child with thirty archers, sent by his father,
and half a man at the head of four hundred dragoons. To stand a siege
under such circumstances against an army of fifteen thousand Spaniards,
and to take Balagny's copper as if it were gold, was more than could be
asked of respectable burghers.

The allusion to the young prince Rhetelois and to De Vich, who had lost a
leg in the wars, was received with much enthusiasm. Balagny, appalled at
the fury of the people, whom he had so long been trampling upon while
their docility lasted, shrank back before their scornful denunciations
into the citadel.

But his wife was not appalled. This princess had from the beginning of
the siege showed a courage and an energy worthy of her race. Night and
day she had gone the rounds of the ramparts, encouraging and directing
the efforts of the garrison. She had pointed batteries against the
enemy's works, and, with her own hands, had fired the cannon. She now
made her appearance in the market-place, after her husband had fled, and
did her best to assuage the tumult, and to arouse the mutineers to a
sense of duty or of shame. She plucked from her bosom whole handfuls of
gold which she threw among the bystanders, and she was followed by a
number of carts filled with sacks of coin ready to be exchanged for the
debased currency.

Expressing contempt for the progress made by the besieging army, and for
the slight impression so far produced upon the defences of the city, she
snatched a pike from a soldier and offered in person