Maurice now ceased cannonading, and burrowed again for ten days without interruption.  Four mines, leading to different points of the defences, were patiently constructed, and two large chambers at the terminations, neatly finished off and filled respectively with five thousand and twenty-five hundred pounds of powder, were at last established under two of the principal bastions.

During all this digging there had been a couple of sorties in which the besieged had inflicted great damage on their enemy, and got back into the town with a few prisoners, having lost but six of their own men.  Sir Francis Vere had been severely wounded in the leg, so that he was obliged to keep his bed during the rest of the siege.  Verdugo, too, had made a feeble attempt to reinforce the place with three hundred men, sixty or seventy of whom had entered, while the rest had been killed or captured.  On such a small scale was Philip’s world-empire contended for by his stadholder in Friesland; yet it was certainly not the fault of the stout old Portuguese.  Verdugo would rather have sent thirty thousand men to save the front door of his great province than three hundred.  But every available man—­and few enough of them they were—­had been sent out of the Netherlands, to defend the world-empire in its outposts of Normandy and Brittany.

This was Philip the Prudent’s system for conquering the world, and men looked upon him as the consummation of kingcraft.

On the 3rd July Maurice ordered his whole force to be in readiness for the assault.  The mines were then sprung.

The bastion of the east gate was blown to ruins.  The mine under the Gast-Huys bulwark, burst outwardly, and buried alive many Hollanders standing ready for the assault.  At this untoward accident Maurice hesitated to give the signal for storming the breach, but the panic within the town was so evident that Lewis William lost no time in seizing the overthrown eastern bulwark, from the ruins of which he looked over the whole city.  The other broken bastion was likewise easily mastered, and the besieged, seeing the storm about to burst upon them with irresistible fury, sent a trumpet.  Meantime Maurice, inspecting the effects of the explosion and preparing for the assault, had been shot through the left cheek.  The wound was not dangerous, and the prince extracted the bullet with his own hand, but the change of half an inch would have made it fatal.  He was not incapacitated—­after his wound had been dressed, amidst the remonstrances of his friends for his temerity-from listening to the propositions of the city.  They were refused, for the prince was sure of having his town on his own terms.