They that gave such information to the Queen, spoke as worldly wise men, and as things appeared to have been. For, the country being almost in all parts wasted, the victuals within reach of Leith either brought in to their stores or else destroyed, and the mills and other places cast down, it appeared that the camp could not have been furnished, unless it had been by their own ships. That could not have been for any long continuance of time, and so would have been of little comfort. But God confounded all worldly wisdom, and made His own benediction as evidently to appear as if, in a manner, He had fed the army from above. In the camp all the time that it lay, after eight days had passed, all kinds of victuals were more abundant, and of more easy prices, than they had been in Edinburgh at any time in the two previous years, or yet have been in that town to this day. The people of Scotland so much abhorred the tyranny of the French that they would have given their substance to have been rid of that chargeable burden which our sins had provoked God to lay upon us--in giving us into the hands of a woman, whom our nobility, in their foolishness, sold unto strangers, and with her the liberty of the realm.... [Sidenote: The Assault upon Leith is unsuccessful.] The camp abounding in all necessary provision, arrangements were made for the confirmation of the siege; and the trenches were drawn as near to the town as they well might be. The great camp removed from Restalrig to the west side of the Water of Leith; and the cannons were planted for the bombardment, and shot at the south-west wall. But all was earth, and the breach was not made so great during the day but that it was sufficiently repaired at night. The English, beginning to weary, determined to give the brush and assault. This they did, upon the seventh day of May, beginning before daylight, and continuing until it was near seven o'clock. Albeit the English and Scottish, with great slaughter of the soldiers of both, were repulsed, there was never a sharper assault given at the hands of so few. The men that assaulted the whole two quarters of the town exceeded not a thousand, and yet they silenced the whole block-houses; yea, they once put the French clean off their walls, and were upon both the east and west block-houses. But they had not sufficient backing. Their ladders wanted six quarters of the proper height; and so, while the foremost were compelled to fight upon the top of the wall, their fellows could not get up to support them. Thus they were dung back again, by overwhelming numbers, when it was thought that the town was won. [Sidenote: Sir James Crofts is blamed.]