die than to yield; nothing was expected but that the city should give up her last breath, and remaining a miserable carcass, should be buried within her own walls and houses.”[62] In this siege the Spanish general committed a fatal error in not trying an assault, which might probably have succeeded, since there were no regular troops within the town; a body of English auxiliaries who were placed in advance near Gouda, and intended by the Prince of Orange to form the garrison of Leyden, when dislodged, having behaved so ill in the first skirmish, that the citizens refused them entrance within the walls. And this step, which might have been their ruin, became the cause of their safety, for the additional number of consumers must have brought their provisions to an earlier end, besides that no troops, comparatively uninterested in the event, would have endured the extremity of distress to which the men of Leyden were reduced. Of the amount of their suffering, which the Italian historian just quoted barely notices, the reader will be enabled to form a fuller idea by a few particulars derived from other authorities. “With extreme impatience they now expected the approach of those tides which are commonly the object of their dread and terror. The situation of the besieged was become the most desperate and deplorable. During seven weeks there had not been a morsel of bread within the city; and the only food had been the roots of herbs and weeds, and the flesh of dogs and horses. Even all these were at length consumed, and the people reduced to live on soup made of the hides of animals which had been killed. A pestilence succeeded to the famine, and carried off in a few weeks some thousands of the inhabitants. Those who survived, overwhelmed with anguish at the dismal scenes which they daily beheld, were scarcely able to perform the mournful office of burying the dead. In this dreadful situation they saw from their walls the flags and sails of the vessels destined for their relief, but had the mortification to perceive that it was utterly impossible for them to approach. It is not surprising that some of the people, finding their misery greater than they were able to endure, should have entertained the thoughts of surrendering the town to the enemy. Some conspiracies were again formed for this purpose, but they were discovered and defeated by the vigilance of Douza, supported by a great majority of the people, to whom neither the pestilence, nor famine, nor death in its most hideous forms, appeared so dreadful as the tyranny of the Spaniards.