Sebastian Tappin, too, encouraged them with the hope of speedy relief, and held out to them the wretched consequences of trusting to the mercy of their foes.
The garrison took heart again, while that of the burghers and their wives had, never faltered.

Their main hope now was in a fortification which they had been constructing inside the Brussels gate--a demilune of considerable strength.

Behind it was a breastwork of turf and masonry, to serve as a last bulwark when every other defence should be forced.

The whole had been surrounded by a foss thirty feet in depth, and the besiegers, as they mounted upon the breaches which they had at last effected in the outer curtain, near the Brussels gate, saw for the first time this new fortification.
The general condition of the defences, and the disposition of the inhabitants, had been revealed to Alexander by a deserter from the town.
Against this last fortress the last efforts of the foe were now directed.
Alexander ordered a bridge to be thrown across the city moat.

As it was sixty feet wide and as many deep, and lay directly beneath the guns of the new demilune, the enterprise was sufficiently hazardous.