carried their works up to the counterscarp; and, to render their lines more solid, they covered them without with posts and planks, bound well together. The batteries were then increased, and continued incessantly playing against the city, but without success, for their balls scarcely grazed the parapets of the walls. They were warned of this by a Jew, who served them as a spy in Rhodes. They immediately changed their batteries, which from that time fired more effectively. Seeing that the place might be said to be covered and buried under its fortifications, the Turks resolved to build two cavaliers of a greater height than its works, which should command the city and its boulevards. Soldiers and pioneers, by order of the general, brought, during several days, earth and stones, which they placed between the gates of Spain and Auvergne, opposite to the bastion of Italy. These two points lay open to the cannon of the place: thousands of men perished here; but such losses were deemed nothing. At length two seeming hills appeared to rise up, higher by twelve feet than the walls, and which completely commanded them. The German post was the first attacked. The Turks pointed their cannon towards the walls, and it was thought impossible they could stand against these destructive machines. The grand master went to the spot, and ordered the wall to be supported within by earth, beams, posts, and fascines; and, as the artillery placed over the gate of his palace, on an elevated spot, bore directly upon the infidels, the Christian cannoniers poured their shot upon them, and knocked to pieces their bastions and their parapets. New ones were obliged to be constructed; the cannon of the city battered them down immediately, whilst the Turkish artillery, on the contrary, badly served and pointed, fired over the walls, without doing any injury. Disheartened by the little effect produced by their batteries, the Sultan’s officers transported them against the tower of St. Nicholas. They played upon it with twelve guns; but they had the mortification to see their cannon dismounted and their batteries ruined by those of the tower. To guard against this effect of the skill of the Christian cannoniers, they resolved to fire only by night, and during the day they buried their cannon under the gabions in the sand: on the approach of darkness, they were placed upon the platform. More than five hundred balls were fired against the point of the wall looking towards the west, and brought it down into the ditch. The Turks congratulated themselves upon the success of this nocturnal battery, and felt certain of carrying the fort at the first assault; they were astonished, however, to see behind the ruins a new wall, terraced with its parapets, and bristling with artillery which prevented all approach to it. Soliman caused all the principal bastions of the place to be attacked, and the Ottoman cannon, which battered them day and night during a whole month, did