The efforts of Orange were now necessarily directed towards obtaining, if possible, a truce of a few weeks from the negotiators at Cologne.  Parma was too crafty, however, to allow Terranova to consent, and as the Duke disclaimed any power over the direct question of peace and war, the siege proceeded.  The gates of Bois-le-Duc and Tongres having thus far resisted the force brought against them, the scene was changed to the gate of Brussels.  This adjoined that of Tongres, was farthest from the river, and faced westwardly towards the open country.  Here the besieged had constructed an additional ravelin, which they had christened, in derision, “Parma,” and against which the batteries of Parma were now brought to bear.  Alexander erected a platform of great extent and strength directly opposite the new work, and after a severe and constant cannonade from this elevation, followed by a bloody action, the “Parma” fort was carried.  One thousand, at least, of the defenders fell, as, forced gradually from one defence to another, they saw the triple walls of their ravelin crumble successively before their eyes.  The tower was absolutely annihilated before they abandoned its ruins, and retired within their last defences.  Alexander being now master of the fosa and the defences of the Brussels gate, drew up a large force on both aides of that portal, along the margin of the moat, and began mining beneath the inner wall of the city.

Meantime, the garrison had been reduced to four hundred soldiers, nearly all of whom were wounded:  wearied and driven to despair, these soldiers were willing to treat.  The townspeople, however, answered the proposition with a shout of fury, and protested that they would destroy the garrison with their own hands if such an insinuation were repeated.  Sebastian Tappin, too, encouraged them with the hope of speedy relief, and held out to them the wretched consequences of trusting to the mercy of their foes.  The garrison took heart again, while that of the burghers and their wives had, never faltered.  Their main hope now was in a fortification which they had been constructing inside the Brussels gate—­a demilune of considerable strength.  Behind it was a breastwork of turf and masonry, to serve as a last bulwark when every other defence should be forced.  The whole had been surrounded by a foss thirty feet in depth, and the besiegers, as they mounted upon the breaches which they had at last effected in the outer curtain, near the Brussels gate, saw for the first time this new fortification.

The general condition of the defences, and the disposition of the inhabitants, had been revealed to Alexander by a deserter from the town.  Against this last fortress the last efforts of the foe were now directed.  Alexander ordered a bridge to be thrown across the city moat.  As it was sixty feet wide and as many deep, and lay directly beneath the guns of the new demilune, the enterprise was sufficiently hazardous.