The morning of the 7th January, 1602, opened with a vigorous cannonade from all the archduke’s batteries, east, west, and south.  Auditor Fleeting, counsellor and secretary of the city, aide-de-camp and right hand of the commander-in-chief, a grim, grizzled, leathern-faced man of fifty, steady under fire as a veteran arquebuseer, ready with his pen as a counting-house clerk, and as fertile in resource as the most experienced campaigner, was ever at the general’s side.  At his suggestion several houses had been demolished, to furnish materials in wood and iron to stop the gaps as soon as made.  Especially about the Sand Hill fort and the Porcupine a plentiful supply was collected, no time having been lost in throwing up stockades, palisades, and every other possible obstruction to the expected assailants.  Knowing perfectly well where the brunt of the battle was to be, Vere had placed his brother Sir Horace at the head of twelve picked companies of diverse nations in the Sand Hill.  Four of the very best companies of the garrison were stationed in the Porcupine, and ten more of the choicest in Fort Hell’s Mouth, under Colonel Meetkerke.  It must be recollected that the first of these three works was the key to the fortifications of the old or outer town.  The other two were very near it, and were the principal redoubts which defended the most exposed and vulnerable portion of the new town on the western side.  The Sand Hill, as its name imported, was the only existing relic within the city’s verge of the chain of downs once encircling the whole place.  It had however been cannonaded so steadily during the six months’ siege as to have become almost ironclad—­a mass of metal gradually accumulating from the enemy’s guns.  With the curtain extending from it towards east and west it protected the old town quite up to the little ancient brick church, one of the only two in Ostend.

All day long the cannon thundered—­a bombardment such as had never before been dreamed of in those days, two thousand shots having been distinctly counted, by the burghers.  There was but languid response from the besieged, who were reserving their strength.  At last, to the brief winter’s day succeeded a pitch-dark evening.  It was dead low tide at seven.  At that hour the drums suddenly beat alarm along the whole line of fortifications from the Gullet on the east to the old harbour on the west, while through the mirky atmosphere sounded the trumpets of the assault, the shouts of the Spanish and Italian commanders, and the fierce responsive yells of their troops.  Sir Francis, having visited every portion of the works, and satisfied himself that every man in the garrison was under arms, and that all his arrangements had been fulfilled, now sat on horseback, motionless as a statue, within the Sand Hill.  Among the many serious and fictitious attacks now making he waited calmly for the one great assault, even allowing some of the enemy to scale the distant counterscarp of