Early in the afternoon the assault was made in four places at once by four divisions of the confederate army.  One point was assigned to the Brandenburghers, another to the Dutch, a third to the Bavarians, and a fourth to the English.  The English were at first less fortunate than they had hitherto been.  The truth is that most of the regiments which had seen service had marched with William to encounter Villeroy.  As soon as the signal was given by the blowing up of two barrels of powder, Cutts, at the head of a small body of grenadiers, marched first out of the trenches with drums beating and colours flying.  This gallant band was to be supported by four battalions which had never been in action, and which, though full of spirit, wanted the steadiness which so terrible a service required.  The officers fell fast.  Every Colonel, every Lieutenant Colonel, was killed or severely wounded.  Cutts received a shot in the head which for a time disabled him.  The raw recruits, left almost without direction, rushed forward impetuously till they found themselves in disorder and out of breath, with a precipice before them, under a terrible fire, and under a shower, scarcely less terrible, of fragments of rock and wall.  They lost heart, and rolled back in confusion, till Cutts, whose wound had by this time been dressed, succeeded in rallying them.  He then led them, not to the place from which they had been driven back, but to another spot where a fearful battle was raging.  The Bavarians had made their onset gallantly but unsuccessfully; their general had fallen; and they were beginning to waver when the arrival of the Salamander and his men changed the fate of the day.  Two hundred English volunteers, bent on retrieving at all hazards the disgrace of the recent repulse, were the first to force a way, sword in hand, through the palisades, to storm a battery which had made great havoc among the Bavarians, and to turn the guns against the garrison.  Meanwhile the Brandenburghers, excellently disciplined and excellently commanded, had performed, with no great loss, the duty assigned to them.  The Dutch had been equally successful.  When the evening closed in the allies had made a lodgment of a mile in extent on the outworks of the castle.  The advantage had been purchased by the loss of two thousand men.613

And now Boufflers thought that he had done all that his duty required.  On the morrow he asked for a truce of forty-eight hours in order that the hundreds of corpses which choked the ditches and which would soon have spread pestilence among both the besiegers and the besieged might be removed and interred.  His request was granted; and, before the time expired, he intimated that he was disposed to capitulate.  He would, he said, deliver up the castle in ten days, if he were not relieved sooner.  He was informed that the allies would not treat with him on such terms, and that he must either consent to an immediate surrender, or prepare for an immediate assault.  He yielded,