Guise bombarded the citadel of Château-Porcien for some days with little effect; but when he turned his guns on the town, it speedily surrendered; and Bassompierre, with four companies of the French Guards and as many of the Swiss, marched in and took possession. In the course of the day the commandant of the citadel sent to ask for a parley, and was conducted by Bassompierre to Guise’s quarters, where, after a lively discussion as to whether or not the garrison were to be permitted to march out with the honours of war, terms were arranged, and next morning the citadel capitulated. After Guise, with a part of his cavalry, had made an unsuccessful attempt to surprise an infantry regiment of the enemy quartered in a village near Laon, and the Château of Wassigny had been taken, Thémines was despatched to Rocroi to dismantle and bring up six of the guns from that fortress; and on April 8 the army advanced to Rethel and laid siege to it. Here Bassompierre’s troubles began; and artillery officers who served during the late war in that part of France under similar climatic conditions will appreciate the difficulties with which he had to contend. “Rain fell continuously,” he says, “and, as the soil in the Rethelois is clay, we encountered a thousand difficulties, chiefly in moving our cannon, which sunk in it over the axle-trees. At last we made ready a battery of eight pieces below the town, but when I came on Friday morning, the 14th of April, to see if Lesines[118] had kept his promise to have the eight pieces in position by daybreak, I found that there were only two. A third was at thirty paces from the battery, sunk so deeply in the ground that they had been unable to move it; while a fourth was a hundred paces distant. This last had been abandoned by the officers because, in bringing it up, a driver and some of the horses had been killed, upon which the other drivers had unyoked their horses and fled.” However, Bassompierre had his redoubtable mountaineers to fall back on.