from the fort struck so hard upon the buckler under cover of which he was
taking his observations as to fell him to the ground. Sir Francis Vere,
who was with the prince under the same buckler, likewise measured his
length in the trench, but both escaped serious injury.

Pauli, one of the States commissioners present in the camp, wrote to
Barneveld that it was to be hoped that the accident might prove a warning
to his Excellency. He had repeatedly remonstrated with him, he said,
against his reckless exposure of himself to unnecessary danger, but he
was so energetic and so full of courage that it was impossible to
restrain him from being everywhere every day.

Three days later, the letter Y did its work. At ten o'clock 15 July, of
the night of the 15th July, Prince Maurice ordered the mines to be
sprung, when the north ravelin was blown into the air, and some forty of
the garrison with it. Two of them came flying into the besiegers' camp,
and, strange to say, one was alive and sound. The catastrophe finished
the sixty-five days' siege, the breach was no longer defensible, the
obstinacy of the burghers was exhausted, and capitulation followed.
In truth, there had been a subterranean intrigue going on for many weeks,
which was almost as effective as the mine. A certain Jan to Boer had
been going back and forth between camp and city, under various pretexts
and safe-conducts, and it had at last appeared that the Jesuits and the
five hundred of Verdugo's veterans were all that prevented Groningen from
returning to the Union. There had been severe fighting within the city
itself, for the Jesuits had procured the transfer of the veterans from
the faubourg to the town itself, and the result of all these operations,
political, military, and jesuitical, was that on 22nd July articles of
surrender were finally agreed upon between Maurice and a deputation from
the magistrates, the guilds, and commander Lanckema.