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In spite of a heavy fire, the Freibergers made good use of the night in preparing trenches, thickly studded with palisadoes, close behind the main wall, in throwing up great piles of branches and trunks of trees in the new breach, and doubling the number of men at the points chiefly threatened.
They nerved the courage of these distressed Freibergers, until the most faint-hearted among them rose into a hero. Let the Swedes renew their assault on the next day as fiercely as they pleased; let them summon the town three times over to surrender, and make all their preparations for a final attack; nothing could now take away the joyful assurance of immediate relief.
The Swedes maintained their fire throughout the whole of that evening, and far into the night, to prevent the Freibergers from rebuilding their fortifications; in the course of this firing a miner and a forester were killed in the city, and several others among the defenders severely wounded.
Then began a severe subterranean battle. Both sides made desperate exertions in the attempt to get the upper hand, and for very plain reasons the Freibergers did their utmost to steal a march on the enemy.
Then the Freibergers heard loud sounds of confusion and disturbance and much shouting in the Swedish camp; but the dreaded general assault was still unaccountably delayed. Between two and three o'clock on the morning of February 17th, there arrived at the city moat an Imperialist soldier, who had been taken prisoner by the Swedes before Leipzig, and had now made his escape.
The foe, attacked in rear by the garrison of the water-tower, were gradually compelled to give way before the superior force of the Freibergers, and were at length driven back beneath the arched vault of the Münzbach, a retreat into which the Saxon bullets followed them, rapidly thinning their ranks.
While the battle still raged round the Peter, Meissen, and Erbis Gates, and the Swedes fancied the Freibergers a prey to anxiety and fear, the undismayed miners made a sortie through the Donat Gate, destroyed the Swedish siege-works that lay in that quarter, slew a number of the enemy, and returned into the city, bringing with them several prisoners.
'This is our weak point, continued Schweinitz 'the point at which the enemy would like to strike; but they shall find it a hard nut to crack yet, though gate and tower are little better than ruins. Ah! my friend, give me the devotion and bravery of the Freibergers before any number of bastions, if I am to hold the foe at bay.
Meantime the prudent Freibergers had not in the least relaxed their diligence in filling up the enemy's trenches and destroying their batteries, while repairing their own barbicans and moat, building the former up with gabions, and strengthening the latter with a stout wooden parapet.
The Freibergers, instead of abandoning themselves to the transports of an excessive joy, re-occupied the Peter Gate without delay, and made a sortie in which they set fire to the enemy's batteries and advanced works.
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