ts 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.