were alike
unavailing, and where the bravest as well as the most cowardly were
liable at any moment to be blown into the air, or smothered
underground. The dangers of this service, at all times great; were
immensely aggravated by the extraordinary pains taken by those who
had constructed the fortifications to prepare for subterranean
warfare by the construction of galleries.

The miners frequently met underground, breaking into each other's
galleries. Sometimes the troops, mistaking friend for foe, fought
with each other. Sometimes whole companies entered mines by mistake
at the very moment that they were primed for explosion. They were
often drowned, suffocated with smoke, or buried alive. Sometimes
scores were blown into the air.

It was not surprising that even the hearts of the allied troops
were appalled at the new and extraordinary dangers which they had
to face at the siege of Tournai; and the bravest were indeed
exposed to the greatest danger. The first to mount a breach, to
effect a lodgment in an outwork, to enter a newly discovered mine,
was sure to perish. First there was a low rumbling noise, then the
earth heaved, and whole companies were scattered with a frightful
explosion.

On the 5th of August, a sally made by the besieged was bravely
repulsed, and the besiegers, pressing closely upon them, effected a
lodgment; but immediately a mine was sprung, and 150 men blown into
the air.

On the 20th, the besieged blew down a wall which overhung a sap,
and two officers and thirty-four soldiers were killed.

On the 23rd a mine sixty feet long and twenty feet broad was
discovered, just as a whole battalion of Hanoverian troops had
taken up their place above it. All were congratulating themselves
on the narrow escape, when a mine placed below that they had
discovered exploded, burying all in the upper mine in the ruins.

On the 25th, 300 men posted in a large mine which had been
discovered, were similarly destroyed by the explosion of another
mine below it; and the same night 100 men posted in the ditch were
killed by a wall being blown out upon them.

In resisting the attack upon one side of the fortress only,
thirty-eight mines were sprung in twenty-six days, almost every one
with fatal effect. It is no detriment to the courage of the troops
to say, that they shrank appalled before such sudden and terrible a
mode of warfare, and Marlborough and Eugene in person visited the
trenches and braved the dange