The decision in favor of seizing this favorable opportunity for acquiring his neighbor's territory was practically unanimous, and the tyrant of Pegu accordingly assembled an army of 800,000 men, 100,000 of whom were "strangers," _i.e._, mercenary troops, and among these we find 1,000 Portuguese, commanded by one Diego Suarez d'Albergaria, nicknamed Galego. So the Portuguese, as we shall see, played important parts on both sides of the great war that followed. After capturing the frontier defences, the Burmans marched across the country through the forests "that were cut down by three-score thousand pioneers, whom the King had sent before to plane the passages and wayes," and sat down before the devoted capital. "During the first five days that the King of _Bramaa_ had been before the city of _Odiaa_, he had bestowed labour and pains enough, as well in making of trenches and pallisadoes, as in the providing all things necessary for the siege; in all which time the besieged never offered to stir, whereof _Diego Suarez_, the marshall of the camp, resolved to execute the design for which he came; to which effect, of the most part of the men which he had under his command, he made two separated squadrons, in each of which there were six battalions of six thousand a piece. After this manner he marched in battell array, at the sound of many instruments, towards the two poynts which the city made on the south side, because the entrance there seemed more facile to him than any other where. So upon the 19th day of _June_, in the year 1548, an hour before day, all these men of war, having set up above a thousand ladders against the walls, endeavoured to mount up on them; but the besieged opposed them so valiently, that in less than half an hour there remained dead on the place above ten thousand on either part. In the mean time the King, who incouraged his souldiers, seeing the ill success of this fight, commanded these to retreat, and then made the wall to be assaulted afresh, making use for that effect of five thousand elephants of war which he had brought thither and divided into twenty troops of two hundred and fifty apiece, upon whom there were twenty thousand _Moens_ and _Chaleus_, choice men and that had double pay. The wall was then assaulted by these forces with so terrible an impetuosity as I want words to express it. For whereas all the elephants carried wooden castles on their backs, from whence they shot with muskets, brass culverins, and a great number of harquebuses a crock, each of them ten or twelve spans long, these guns made such an havock of the besieged that in less than a quarter of an hour the most of them were beaten down; the elephants withall setting their trunks to the target fences, which served as battlements, and wherewith they within defended themselves, tore them down in such sort as not one of them remained entire; so that by this means the wall was abandoned of all defence, no man daring to shew himself above.