When these field-works, which took three days, were completed, Monsieur and the Comte d'Artois arrived; they reconnoitred the place, which was called upon in vain to surrender, although Wimpfen[88] seemed willing to do so. Like the Grand Condé[89], we had not won the Battle of Rocroi, and so we were not able to capture Thionville; but we were not beaten under its walls, like Feuquières[90]. We took up a position on the high-road, at the end of a village which formed a suburb of the town, outside the horn-work which defended the bridge over the Moselle. The troops fired at each other from the houses; our post remained in possession of those which it had taken. I was not present at this first action. Armand, my cousin, was there and behaved well. While they were fighting in the village, my company was requisitioned to establish a battery on the skirt of a wood which capped the summit of a hill. Along the slope of this hill, vineyards ran down to the plain joining the outer fortifications of Thionville. [Sidenote: The siege of Thionville.] The engineer directing us made us throw up a gazoned cavalier for our guns; we drew a parallel open trench to place us below the cannon-balls. These earthworks took long in making, for we were all, young officers and old alike, unaccustomed to wield the mattock and spade. We had no wheelbarrows and carried the earth in our coats, which we used as sacks. Fire was opened on us from a lunette; it was the more irksome to us in that we were unable to reply: eight-pounders and a Cohorn howitzer, which was outranged, formed all our artillery. The first shell we fired fell outside the glacis and aroused the jeers of the garrison. A few days later, we were joined by some Austrian guns and gunners. One hundred infantry men and a picket of the naval cavalry were relieved at this battery every twenty-four hours. The besieged prepared to attack it; we could distinguish a movement on the rampart through the telescope. When night fell, we saw a column issue through a postern and reach the lunette under shelter of the covert way. My company was ordered up as a reinforcement. At daybreak, five or six hundred patriots began operations in the village, on the high-road above the town; then, turning to the left, they came through the vineyards to take our battery in flank. The sailors charged bravely, but were overthrown and unmasked us. We were too badly armed to return the fire; we pushed forward with fixed bayonets. The attacking party retreated, I know not why; had they held their ground, they would have wiped us out.