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Romances of Alexandre Dumas (9); D'artagnan Ed
Romances of Alexandre Dumas D'artagnan Ed - 9 Author:Alexandre Dumas Volume: 9 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1898 Original Publisher: Little, Brown Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Historical Fiction / Literary Literary Criticism / European / French Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and t... more »here may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. THE ASSAULT. Contrary to Emmanuel Philibert's expectation, the victory of St. Lawrence's Day and the arrival of Philip II. before St. Quentin did not bring about the surrender of the town; aud when, instead of sending a flag of truce, Coligny, with no respect for tho king's majesty, compelled him to beat a hasty retreat by sending an impertinent ball whistling by his august ears, it was evident that the town had decided to hold out to the last extremity. It was therefore resolved to press the siege unremittingly. The siege had already lasted ten days; assuredly too much time had been lost before such wretched walls. An end must be put in the shortest possible time to the obstinacy of these impudent townspeople who dared still to hold out when they had lost all hope of succor, and who had now no prospect before them except of being carried by assault, and all the horrors which would necessarily follow. Whatever precautions Coligny had taken to conceal from the inhabitants of St. Quentin the news of the constable's defeat, by this time it had spread over tho town; but, wonderful to relate, its effect was, as the admiral himself states, more depressing on the soldiers than on the townspeople. The great difficulty, nevertheless, which the admiral had, and which, as we have seen, had embarrassed himfrom the very beginning of the siege, was to find workmen to make good the damage wrought by the enemy's artillery. The ram...« less