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,