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SOZOMENO. A3 on the little hill called Margheriti, which is between the Costanzo and Podecattero bastions. The fourth in the middle of the slope of mount Tomandia : but from these forts they could make no grand attack on the Avails. From these points they began to push inwards and to come up to the ditch and edge of the old city. Then with their trenches they got np under the four bastions Podecattero, Costanzo, Davila and Tripoli, to face which they set four other very lively forts at eighty paces from our ditch, from whieh they sought to bombard with some effect, and for four successive days they fired with pieces of UO from morning to night : only in the middle of the day they rested for four hours on account of the great heat. They discovered however that they could do nothing, because the earthworks were such that the shot from their artillery lodged therein without destroying them. So they gave up their attempts to fire upon us, and began to ci-eep up with spades and picks and sundry very deep trenches. "We on the other hand did not fail to respond with our artillery, with which we did them great damage, overturning and disabling-some of their cannon. For all that they came up to the counterscarp, round which they drew a great coimterfosse, throwing up the earth towards the city, and iu this they posted innumerable musketeers, who day and night, aimed at anyone who showed himself on the walls. Their trenches and forts were strengthened with empty fosses, limes and pits broad and deep enough to hold large bodies of men, while neither our artillery, cavalry nor infantry could harass or dislodge them except to our loss. Next they began to drive very deep trenches into the ditch of the city, throwing in earth and fascines, which latter their horsemen brought in from a distance, without any hindrance from our cavalry, such as the knights and feudatories wished to make. With these traverses of fascines they overtopped our flanks, which could do them no kind of hurt. They then began to cut away the angles and front of our bastions. We saw the enemy pushing on without any loss on their side, ami no kind of hindrance on ours, and anxious about the future we applied many times to the Government and the Coadjutor, urging that a brisk sortie should he made to destroy what the enemy had constructed in the ditch. But the opinion of their lordships was that no sortie should be made, seeing that the Italian soldiers were very few, and the rest were peasants, while the mass of oity folk was without experience, coinage, or numbers. For during this summer a general sickness prevailed in this most unlucky city, whereof there died not only very many Italian soldiers, bnt a very great number of the peasants and citizens. Of the Italians, who were at first 1300, between those who died of disease or who were killed or wounded during forty-six days and fifteen assaults so many were missing that in the last assault only 400 were found fit to fight. For all these reasons they were against leaving the city. Nevertheless as danger pressed, and men saw the irremediable ruin which hung over ns, it was decided to make a spirited sortie with part of the peasants and citizens, the Italians and all the cavalry and stradiots, while the feudatories and knights complained that they were wronged and insulted because they were not allowed to go ont, Bnt there was no remedy, and the chiefs even wished to recall the order given, so at mid-day on August J5—the hour was chosen because in the morning the Turks were always about and aimed, but at mid-day lay down and slept in the shade—the infantry to the number of a thousand inarched ont under Captain Piovene of Vicenza, Lieutenant to the Coadjutor, who although his duties were those of a mounted officer wished on that day to go ont on foot, and with Count Alberto Scotto and other captains led his brave Italian soldiers and some Greeks so well that they got up to the enemy's forts and made themselves masters of two which were abandoned by the Turks, who feared that worse might yet befall thorn. So much excitement was caused by this exploit that even in the pavilions there was confusion and dismay enough to drive their owners to 11—2

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