On August 31 Cromwell mustered a field force consisting of eight regiments of foot and six of horse, with some dragoons, in a field three miles north of Dublin. He marched next day and encamped next night at Ballygarth on the Nanny River, very near Julianstown, where the English forces had been routed eight years before. On September 3, Cromwell's lucky day, he was close to Drogheda, where there was a week's delay before the batteries could be got ready, and the heavy guns landed below the town. On the 7th, Aston made a successful sally, but without in any way interrupting the assailants' preparations. On the morning of the 10th Cromwell summoned the town in the name of Parliament. 'To the end,' he wrote, 'effusion of blood may be prevented, I thought fit to summon you to deliver the same into my hands to their use. If this be refused you will have no cause to blame me.' Aston did refuse, and a cannonade was opened against the south-east angle of the town, one battery being against the east, and the other against the south side of St. Mary's Church. The steeple fell, but the breach did not prove practicable until the next day. Some of the siege guns carried shot of sixty-four pounds weight, and the cannon of the defenders must have been quite overmatched. No regular approaches were necessary, and about five on the second day the breach was assaulted. The stormers were repulsed once, according to Cromwell and Ludlow, twice according to Royalist accounts. The general entered the breach himself at the head of a reserve of infantry, who carried the church and some trenches which the defenders had made inside the walls. These inner works really helped the assailants, for they prevented Aston from using his cavalry. The bank was too steep for the English horse, but the foot soldiers seized the entrenchments and drove a large part of the garrison 'into the Mill-mount, a place very strong and of difficult access, being exceeding high, having a good graft and strongly palisaded; the governor, Sir Arthur Aston, and divers considerable officers being there, our men getting up to them were ordered by me to put all to the sword; and, indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that there were in arms in the town.' This is Cromwell's own account, and he estimates the slain at about 2000. A part of the defenders were driven across the bridge and as far as St. Sunday's Gate, at the far end of the town, where a tower was occupied, as was another near the west gate. About a hundred took refuge in St. Peter's Church tower, which was fired by Cromwell's orders. The parties near the two gates surrendered next day, and in one case, where fatal shots had been fired, 'the officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed and the rest shipped for the Barbadoes; the soldiers in the other tower were all spared as to their lives only, and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.