Note 59 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
The citizens replied to a summons to surrender, that they would not lack food, while their left arms remained, but feed on them, and fight for liberty with their right. Strada, de Bello Belgico, lib. viii. Vaunts of this kind are dangerous: the Leydenists, however, did no discredit to theirs. It was a maxim of the Maréchal de Grammout, that a governor who began by making a great to-do, and burnt his suburbs to make a brilliant defence, generally ended by making a very bad one. See the Mémoires de Grammont, chap, viii., where there is a capital story of the gallant defence of Lerida, by Don Gregorio Brice, bearing upon this point.