Then they advanced with battering-rams, some under portable screens covered with raw leather for protection from fire, and some under shields in the form of the Roman testudo. When they came to the edge of the moat they began to fill it up with earth, fascines, whole trees, and even the bodies of captives whom they put to death before the very eyes of the besieged. While those farthest away drove off the defenders of the battlements with a hail-storm of arrows and leaden ball, those close to the tower hammered it with the rams; but all in vain. The Parisians poured streams of boiling oil, wax, and molten pitch upon the enemy; their catapults hurled huge rocks which crushed the assailants’ screens and shields, and let down iron hooks which tore away the coverings and made the enemy a target for their arrows. Three blazing ships floated down to the bridge, were stopped by the abutting stone piles, and could not set it on fire. This hopeless resistance had lasted for more than two months when a sudden rise of the river carried away, on the night of February 6th, 886, a portion of the “Petit-Pont.” The Northmen immediately rushed upon the tower on the left bank, now cut off from the city. Only twelve men were stationed there, but they held out for a whole day and then retired, still fighting, to the wreckage of the bridge. Finally they surrendered on the promise that their lives would be saved, but as soon as the barbarians got hold of these brave men they put them to death. One of them, of gigantic frame, appeared to be a chief, and the Northmen decided to spare him; but he begged to share the fate of his companions. “You will never get ransom for my head,” he told them, and so forced them to kill him.