On the 12th March there was a determined effort to carry the lesser Polder Bulwark.  After a fierce and bloody action, the place was taken by storm, and the first success in the game was registered for Spinola.  The little fort was crammed full of dead, but such of the defenders as survived were at last driven out of it, and forced to take refuge in the next work.  Day after day the same bloody business was renewed, a mere monotony of assaults, repulses, sallies, in which hardly an inch of ground was gained on either side, except at the cost of a great pile of corpses.  “Men will never know, nor can mortal pen ever describe,” said one who saw it all, “the ferocity and the pertinacity of both besiegers and besieged.”  On the 15th of March, Colonel Catrice, an accomplished Walloon officer of engineers, commanding the approaches against the Polder, was killed.  On the 21st March, as Peter Orieselles was taking his scrambling dinner in company with Philip Fleming, there was a report that the enemy was out again in force.  A good deal of progress had been made during the previous weeks on the south-west and west, and more was suspected than was actually known.  It was felt that the foe was steadily nibbling his way up to the counterscarp.  Moreover, such was the emulation among the Germans, Walloons, Italians, and Spaniards for precedence in working across the canal, that a general assault and universal explosion were considered at any instant possible.  The governor sent Fleming to see if all was right in the Porcupine, while he himself went to see if a new battery, which he had just established to check the approaches of the enemy towards the Polder Half-moon and Ravelin in a point very near the counterscarp, was doing its duty.  Being, as usual, anxious to reconnoitre with his own eyes, he jumped upon the rampart.  But there were sharp-shooters in the enemy’s trenches, and they were familiar with the governor’s rusty old doublet and haggard old face.  Hardly had he climbed upon the breastwork when a ball pierced his heart, and he fell dead without a groan.  There was a shout of triumph from the outside, while the tidings soon spread sadness through the garrison, for all loved and venerated the man.  Philip Fleming, so soon as he learned the heavy news, lost no time in unavailing regrets, but instantly sent a courier to Prince Maurice; meantime summoning a council of superior officers, by whom Colonel John van Loon was provisionally appointed commandant.

A stately, handsome man, a good officer, but without extensive experience, he felt himself hardly equal to the immense responsibility of the post, but yielding to the persuasions of his comrades, proceeded to do his best.  His first care was to secure the all-important Porcupine, towards which the enemy had been slowly crawling with his galleries and trenches.  Four days after he had accepted the command he was anxiously surveying that fortification, and endeavouring to obtain a view of the enemy’s works, when a cannon-ball