The assault was preluded by a bombardment of three days. The battlements yielded, breaches were effected in the walls, the roofs of the houses were shattered, the battered gates gave way, and all promised success. But the besieged neglected no precaution. During the night the walls were repaired and the gates strengthened. Women laboured under the orders of the competent directors during the hours of darkness, thus allowing their husbands to take their requisite repose. They carried stones and the munitions of war to the ramparts, and learning to handle the cross-bow, they succeeded in committing no inconsiderable amount of execution among the ranks of the Episcopal army. Other women prepared lime and boiling pitch "to cook the bishop's soup for him."[210] On the 31st August, at daybreak, the roar of the Hessian devil, as a large cannon belonging to the Landgrave Philip was called, gave the signal. Instantly the city was assaulted in six places. The ditches were filled, petards were placed under the gates, the palisades were torn down, and ladders were planted. But however vigorous might be the attack, the defence was no less vigorous. Those on the walls threw down the ladders with all upon them, and they fell bruised and mangled into the fosse, the heads of those who had reached the battlements were crushed with stones and cudgels, and their hands, clasping the parapet, were hacked off. Women hurled stones upon the besiegers, and enveloped them in boiling pitch, quicklime, and blazing sulphur. [210] _Ibid._ p. 70. Repulsed, they returned to the charge eight or ten times, but always in vain. The whole day was consumed in ineffectual assaults, and when the red sun went down in the west, the clarions pealed the retreat, and the army, dispirited and bearing with it a train of wounded, withdrew, leaving the ground strewn with dead. Had the Anabaptists made a night assault, the defeat and dispersion of the Episcopal troops would have been completed. But instead, they sang a hymn and spent the night in banqueting. The prince-bishop, despondent and at his wits' end for money, called his officers to a consultation on the 3rd September, and it was unanimously resolved to turn the investment into an effective blockade. This resolution was submitted to the electors of Cologne and Saxony, the Duke of Cleves, and the Landgrave of Hesse, and these princes approved of the design of Francis von Waldeck. It was determined to raise seven redoubts, united by ramparts and a ditch, around the city, so as completely to close it, and prevent the exit of the besieged and the entrance of provisions. It was decided that the defence of this circle of forts should be confided to a sufficient number of tried soldiers, and that the rest of the army should be dismissed.