At daybreak, the general assault commenced, and the aga (or colonel) of the janizaries succeeded in planting his banner on the gate intrusted to the care of the Spaniards and Auvergnese. But this success was merely temporary in that quarter; for the Ottomans were beaten back with such immense slaughter, that fifteen thousand of their choicest troops were cut to pieces in the breach and the ditch. But still the assault was prosecuted in every quarter and every point, and the Christian warriors acquitted themselves nobly in the defense of the city. The women of Rhodes manifested a courage and zeal which history has loved to record as most honorable to their sex. Some of them carried about bread and wine to recruit the fainting and refresh the wearied, others were ready with bandages and lint to stanch the blood which flowed from the wounded, some conveyed earth in wheelbarrows, to stop up the breaches made in the walls, and others bore along immense stones to hurl down upon the assailants. Oh! it was a glorious, but a sad and mournful sight--that death-struggle of the valiant Christians against the barbarism of the East. And many touching proofs of woman's courage and daring characterized that memorable siege. Especially does this fact merit our attention:--The wife of a Christian captain, seeing her husband slain, and the enemy gaining ground rapidly, embraced her two children tenderly, made the sign of the cross upon their brows, and then, having stabbed them to the heart, threw them into the midst of a burning building near, exclaiming, "The infidels will not now be able, my poor darlings, to wreak their vengeance on you, alive or dead!" In another moment she seized her dead husband's sword, and plunging into the thickest of the fight, met a death worthy of a heroine. The rain now began to fall in torrents, washing away the floods of gore which, since daybreak, had dyed the bastions and the wall; and the assault continued as arduously as the defense was maintained with desperation. Solyman commanded in person the division which was opposed to the gate and the fort intrusted by the lord general of the Christians to the care of the Italian auxiliaries. But, though it was now past noon, and the sultan had prosecuted his attack on that point with unabated vigor since the dawn, no impression had yet been made. The Italians fought with a heroism which bade defiance to the numerical superiority of their assailants; for they were led on by a young chieftain who, beneath an effeminate exterior, possessed the soul of a lion. Clad in a complete suit of polished armor, and with crimson plumes waving from his steel helmet, to which no visor was attached, that youthful leader threw himself into the thickest of the medley, sought the very points where danger appeared most terrible--and, alike by his example and his words, encouraged those whom he commanded to dispute every inch of ground with the Moslem assailants.