So, while one of his ablest officers is in charge of the attacking party on the breach, His Highness himself directs a new set of operations. Once more the roar of artillery and of musketry rend the air with their portentous sound. The Duke of Parma's picked men attack the last bastion of Cantimpré, whilst from the roads of Arras, of Sailly and Bapaume, the whole of the Spanish infantry rush like a mighty wave to the charge.
Pikemen and halberdiers, archers and lancers, once more to the assault! Are ye indeed cowards, that a pack of Flemish rabble can hold you at bay till you sink back exhausted and beaten? Up, Bracamonte and Ribeiras! Messar, with your musketeers! Salvado, with your bow-men! Up, ye mighty Spanish armies, who have seen the world at your feet! With Farnese himself to lead you, the hero of an hundred sieges, the queller of an hundred rebellions; are ye dolts and fools that you cannot crush a handful of undisciplined rabble?
And in close masses, shoulder to shoulder, they come!—exhausted, but still obstinate, and with the hope of all the rich booty to lure them on. Down the declivity of the moat—no longer deep, now that it is filled with dead! And up again to below the walls! The setting sun is behind them and gleams on their breastplates and their bonnets, and gilds the edges of the battlements with lines of flame.
And, up on the crumbling battlements, the defenders of Cambray—the clerks and shopkeepers and churls—hear the tramp of many feet, feel the earth quivering beneath this thunder of a last mighty assault. Sturdy, undaunted hands grip lance and pike tighter still, and intrepid hearts wait for this final charge, as they have waited for others to-day, and will go on waiting till the last of them has stilled its beating.
And Gilles de Crohin in their midst, invincible and cool, scours the battlements and the breach, the bastions and the ramparts—always there where he is needed most, where spirits want reviving or courage needs the impetus of praise. He knows as well as they do that gunpowder is running short, that arrows are few and thousands of weapons broken with usage: he knows, better than they do, that if de Balagny's troop tarries much longer all this heroic resistance will have been in vain.
So he keeps his own indomitable little army on the leash, husbanding precious lives and no less precious ammunition; keeping them back, well away from the parapets, lest the sight of the enemy down below lead them on to squander both. Thus, of all that goes on beneath the walls, of the nature of the attack or the chances of a surprise, the stout defenders can see nothing. Only Gilles, whilst scouring the lines, can see; for he has crawled on his hands and knees to the outermost edge of the crumbling parapet and has gazed down upon the Duke of Parma's hordes.
V
Now the Spanish halbertmen have reached the hither side of the moat. The breach is before them, tantalizingly open. The lancers are following over the improvised bridges, and behind them the musketeers are sending a volley of shot over their heads into the breach. It is all done with much noise and clash of steel and thundering artillery and cries of 'Long live King Philip!'—all to cover the disposing of scaling ladders against the walls.
The pikemen are executing this surprise attack, one in which they are adepts. The noisy onslaught, the roar of artillery, the throwing of dust in the eyes of wearied defenders; then the silent scaling of the walls, the rush upon the battlements, wholesale panic and slaughter.
Alexander Farnese hath oft employed these devices and hath never known them to fail. So the men throw down their pikes, carry pistols in their right hand and a short dagger-like sword between their teeth. They fix their ladders—five of them—and begin quite noiselessly to mount. Ten on each ladder, which makes fifty all told, and they the flower of the Duke of Parma's troops. Up they swarm like human ants striving to reach a hillock. Now the gunners have to cease firing, lest they hit those ladders with their human freight.