The spoil was forty muskets, one drum, and six
prisoners.
The retreat of this little band was skilfully secured by Captain Ogle
and Captain Rawsthorne, so that not one of the assailants was either
slain or wounded.
The besiegers were much annoyed with devices, ingeniously contrived by
the garrison to intimidate them, and hinder and injure their work.
Hitherto they had not been able to cast up a mound for their ordnance,
so harassed and occupied were they with these incessant alarms. But
Rigby, on whom devolved the plan and conduct of the siege, seeing that
their affairs were in no thriving condition, but that rather they were
the scoff and jest of the garrison, who daily taunted them from the
walls, determined at all hazards to raise his cannon. For this purpose a
considerable number of the peasantry and poorer sort in the
neighbourhood, and for miles round, were driven like beasts to their
daily work, labouring unremittingly at the mounds and trenches. At first
they were sheltered by baskets and hurdles, afterwards by a testudo, or
wooden house running upon wheels and roofed with thick planks. Still
many lives were lost in this desperate service.
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