The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1579-80 | Page 8

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 baffled by these novel weapons used by peasant
and woman, coming to the aid of the sword; spear, and musket of
trained soldiery. More than a thousand had fallen at the Bois- le-Duc
gate, and still fresh besiegers mounted the breach, only to be beaten
back, or to add to the mangled heap of the slain. At the Tongres gate,
meanwhile, the assault had fared no better. A herald had been
despatched thither in hot haste, to shout at the top of his lungs,
"Santiago! Santiago! the Lombards have the gate of Bois-le-Duc!"
while the same stratagem was employed to persuade the invaders on the
other side of the town that their comrades had forced the gate of
Tongres. The soldiers, animated by this fiction, and advancing with

fury against the famous ravelin; which had been but partly destroyed,
were received with a broadside from the great guns of the unshattered
portion, and by a rattling discharge of musketry from the walls. They
wavered a little. At the same instant the new mine--which was to have
been sprung between the ravelin and the gate, but which had been
secretly countermined by the townspeople, exploded with a horrible
concussion, at a moment least expected by the besiegers. Five hundred
royalists were blown into the air. Ortiz, a Spanish captain of engineers,
who had been inspecting the excavations, was thrown up bodily from
the subterranean depth. He fell back again instantly into the same
cavern, and was buried by the returning shower of earth which had
spouted from the mine. Forty- five years afterwards, in digging for the
foundations of a new wall, his skeleton was found. Clad in complete
armor, the helmet and cuirass still sound, with his gold chain around his
neck, and his mattock and pickaxe at his feet, the soldier lay
unmutilated, seeming almost capable of resuming his part in the same
war which--even after his half century's sleep--was still ravaging the
land.
Five hundred of the Spaniards, perished by the explosion, but none of
the defenders were injured, for they, had been prepared. Recovering
from the momentary panic, the besiegers again rushed to the attack.
The battle raged. Six hundred and seventy officers, commissioned or
non- commissioned, had already fallen, more than half mortally
wounded. Four thousand royalists, horribly mutilated, lay on the
ground. It was time that the day's work should be finished, for
Maastricht was not to be carried upon that occasion. The best and
bravest