used by peasant and woman, coming to the aid of the sword; spear, and
musket of trained soldiery. More than a thousand had fallen at the Bois-
le-Duc gate, and still fresh besiegers mounted the breach, only to be
beaten back, or to add to the mangled heap of the slain. At the Tongres
gate, meanwhile, the assault had fared no better. A herald had been
despatched thither in hot haste, to shout at the top of his lungs,
"Santiago! Santiago! the Lombards have the gate of Bois-le-Duc!"
while the same stratagem was employed to persuade the invaders on the
other side of the town that their comrades had forced the gate of
Tongres. The soldiers, animated by this fiction, and advancing with fury
against the famous ravelin; which had been but partly destroyed, were
received with a broadside from the great guns of the unshattered portion,
and by a rattling discharge of musketry from the walls. They wavered a
little. At the same instant the new mine--which was to have been sprung
between the ravelin and the gate, but which had been secretly
countermined by the townspeople, exploded with a horrible concussion,
at a moment least expected by the besiegers. Five hundred royalists were
blown into the air. Ortiz, a Spanish captain of engineers, who had been
inspecting the excavations, was thrown up bodily from the subterranean
depth. He fell back again instantly into the same cavern, and was buried
by the returning shower of earth which had spouted from the mine. Forty-
five years afterwards, in digging for the foundations of a new wall, his
skeleton was found. Clad in complete armor, the helmet and cuirass still
sound, with his gold chain around his neck, and his mattock and pickaxe
at his feet, the soldier lay unmutilated, seeming almost capable of
resuming his part in the same war which--even after his half century's
sleep--was still ravaging the land.

Five hundred of the Spaniards, perished by the explosion, but none of the
defenders were injured, for they, had been prepared. Recovering from the