Many indeed
were strongly in favour of remaining quietly around the tower and
starving its defenders into surrendering.
Others advocated an attempt to stifle them by heaping green wood
and damp straw round the tower; but the more timid pointed out
that many would be killed in carrying out the task by the firearms
of the besieged, and that even were the combustibles placed in
position and lighted the success of the experiment would be by no
means certain, as the besieged might stuff up all the orifices, or
at the worst might obtain sufficient fresh air on the top of the
tower to enable them to breathe.
"You are forgetting," one of the peasants exclaimed, "the powder
wagon which broke down as Count Tilly retreated from the Lech. Did
we not carry off the powder barrels and hide them, partly to prevent
them falling into the hands of these accursed Swedes, partly because
the powder would last us for years for hunting the wolf and wild
boar? We have only to stow these inside the tower to blow it into
the air."
The idea was seized with shouts of acclamation. Most of the peasants
who had assisted in carrying off the contents of the wagon were
present, and these started instantly to dig up the barrels which they
had taken as their share of the booty. The shouts of satisfaction
and the departure of forty or fifty men at full speed in various
directions did not pass unnoticed by the garrison of the tower.
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