siege were never bare of victims.  Among the captives was a gallant officer, Baptist van Trier, for whom De la Marck in vain offered two thousand crowns and nineteen Spanish prisoners.  The proposition was refused with contempt.  Van Trier was hanged upon the gallows by one leg until he was dead, in return for which barbarity the nineteen Spaniards were immediately gibbeted by De la Marck.  With this interchange of cruelties the siege may be said to have opened.

Don Frederic had stationed himself in a position opposite to the gate of the Cross, which was not very strong, but fortified by a ravelin.  Intending to make a very short siege of it, he established his batteries immediately, and on the 18th, 19th, and 20th December directed a furious cannonade against the Cross-gate, the St. John’s-gate, and the curtain between the two.  Six hundred and eighty shots were discharged on the first, and nearly as many on each of the two succeeding days.  The walls were much shattered, but men, women, and children worked night and day within the city, repairing the breaches as fast as made.  They brought bags of sand; blocks of stone, cart-loads of earth from every quarter, and they stripped the churches of all their statues, which they threw by heaps into the gaps.  If They sought thus a more practical advantage from those sculptured saints than they could have gained by only imploring their interposition.  The fact, however, excited horror among the besiegers.  Men who were daily butchering their fellow-beings, and hanging their prisoners in cold blood, affected to shudder at the enormity of the offence thus exercised against graven images.

After three days’ cannonade, the assault was ordered, Don Frederic only intending a rapid massacre, to crown his achievements at—­Zutphen and Naarden.  The place, he thought, would fall in a week, and after another week of sacking, killing, and ravishing, he might sweep on to “pastures new” until Holland was overwhelmed.  Romero advanced to the breach, followed by a numerous storming party, but met with a resistance which astonished the Spaniards.  The church bells rang the alarm throughout the city, and the whole population swarmed to the walls.  The besiegers were encountered not only with sword and musket, but with every implement which the burghers’ hands could find.  Heavy stones, boiling oil, live coals, were hurled upon the heads of the soldiers; hoops, smeared with pitch and set on fire, were dexterously thrown upon their necks.  Even Spanish courage and Spanish ferocity were obliged to shrink before the steady determination of a whole population animated by a single spirit.  Romero lost an eye in the conflict, many officers were killed and wounded, and three or four hundred soldiers left dead in the breach, while only three or four of the townsmen lost their lives.  The signal of recal was reluctantly given, and the Spaniards abandoned the assault.  Don Frederic was now aware that Harlem would not fall at his feet at the first sound of his trumpet.  It was obvious that a siege must precede the massacre.  He gave orders therefore that the ravelin should be undermined, and doubted not that, with a few days’ delay, the place would be in his hands.