On the 4th of May, after thirty-three days of constant fighting, the great tower considered the key of the fortifications, and called by the Moslems “the cursed tower,” was thrown down by the military engines. To increase the terror and distraction of the besieged, sultan Khalil mounted three hundred drummers, with their drums, upon as many dromedaries, and commanded them to make as much noise as possible whenever a general assault was ordered. From the 4th to the 14th of May the attacks were incessant. On the 15th, the double wall was forced, and the king of Cyprus, panic-stricken, fled in the night to his ships, and made sail for the island of Cyprus, with all his followers, and with near three thousand of the best men of the garrison. On the morrow the Saracens attacked the post he had deserted; they filled up the ditch with the bodies of dead men and horses, piles of wood, stones, and earth, and their trumpets then sounded to the assault. Ranged under the yellow banner of Mahomet, the Mamlooks forced the breach, and penetrated sword in hand to the very centre of the city; but their victorious career and insulting shouts were there stopped by the mail-clad Knights of the Temple and the Hospital, who charged on horseback through the narrow streets, drove them back with immense carnage, and precipitated them headlong from the walls. At sunrise on the following morning the air resounded with the deafening noise of drums and trumpets, and the breach was carried and recovered several times, the military friars at last closing up the passage with their bodies, and presenting a wall of steel to the advance of the enemy. Loud appeals to God, and to Mahomet, to Jesus Christ, to the Virgin Mary, to heaven and the saints, were to be heard on all sides; and after an obstinate engagement from sunrise to sunset, darkness put an end to the slaughter. The miners continued incessantly to advance their operations; another wide breach was opened in the walls, and on the third day (the 18th) the infidels made the final assault on the side next the gate of St. Anthony. The army of the Mamlooks was accompanied by a troop of sectaries called _Chagis_, a set of religious fanatics, whose devotion consisted in suffering all sorts of privations, and in sacrificing themselves in behalf of Islam. The advance of the Mamlook cavalry to the assault was impeded by the deep ditch, which had been imperfectly filled by the fallen ruins and by the efforts of the soldiers, and these religious madmen precipitated themselves headlong into the abyss and formed a bridge with their bodies, over which the Mamlooks passed to reach the foot of the wall. Nothing could withstand the fierce onslaught of the Moslems. In vain were the first ranks of their cavalry laid prostrate with the dust, and both horses and riders hurled headlong over the ruined walls and battlements into the moat below; their fall only facilitated the progress of those behind them, who pressed on sword in hand over