of the Empress Maud.—­The fourth siege was conducted with different success, by Philip Augustus:  for seven days the citizens quietly witnessed the preparations of the French monarch; and then, either alarmed by the impending conflict, or disgusted by the conduct of their own sovereign, who had utterly deserted them, they opened their gates to the enemy.—­In 1417 the case was far otherwise, though the result was the same.  Henry Vth attacked Falaise upon the fourth of November, and continued to cannonade it till the middle of the following February; and, even then, the surrender was attributed principally to famine.  Great injuries were sustained by the town in the course of this long siege; but, to the credit of our countrymen, the efforts made towards the reparation of them were at least proportionate.  The fortifications were carefully restored; the chapel was rebuilt and endowed afresh; Talbot’s tower was added to the keep; and a suite of apartments, also named after that great captain, was erected in the castle.—­The resistance made by the English garrison of Falaise in 1450, at the time when we were finally expelled from the duchy, was far from equal to that which the French, had previously shewn.  Vigour was indeed displayed in repeated sallies, but six days sufficed to put the French general in possession of the place.  Disheartened troops, cooped up in a fortress without hope of succour, offer but faint opposition; and Falaise was then the last place which held out in Normandy, excepting, only Domfront and Cherbourg, both which were taken almost immediately afterwards.—­Falaise, from this time forwards, suffered no more from foreign enemies:  the future miseries of the town were inflicted by the hands of its own countrymen.  In common with many other places in France, it was doomed to learn from hard experience, that “alta sedent civilis vulnera dextrae.”—­Instigated by the Count de Brissac, governor of the town, and one of the most able generals of the league, the inhabitants were immoveable in their determination to resist the introduction of tenets which they regarded as a fatal variance from the Catholic faith.  The troops of Henry IIIrd, in alliance with those of his more illustrious successor, were vainly brought against Falaise in 1589, by the Duc de Montpensier; a party of enthusiastic peasants, called Gautiers, from the name of a neighboring village, where their association originated, harassed the assailants unremittingly, and rendered such effectual assistance to the garrison, that the siege was obliged to be raised.—­But it was only raised to be renewed at the conclusion of the same year, by Henry of Bourbon, in person, whom the tragical end of his late ally had placed upon the throne of France.  Brissac had now a different enemy to deal with:  he answered the king’s summons to surrender, by pleading his oath taken upon the holy sacrament to the contrary; and he added that, if it should ultimately prove necessary for him to enter into any negotiation,