The next instant he received full on his nape a heavy iron pot, that descending with tremendous force from a window above him, rolled from him broken into three pieces.
He went down under the blow as if a sledge-hammer had struck him; and so sudden, so dramatic was the fall--his armour clanging about him--that for an instant the two bands held their hands and stood staring, as indifferent crowds stand and gaze in the street.

A dozen on the patriots' side knew the house from which the _marmite_ fell, and marked it; and half as many saw at the small window whence it came the grey locks and stern wrinkled face of an aged woman.

The effect on the burghers was magical.

As if the act symbolised not only the loved ones for whom they fought, but the dire distress to which they were come, they rushed on the foreign men-at-arms with a spirit and a fury hitherto unknown.

With a ringing shout of "Mere Royaume! Mere Royaume!"-- raised by those who knew the old woman, and taken up by many who did not--they swept the foe, shaken by the fall of their leader, along the narrow Tertasse, pressed on them, and, still shouting the new war-cry, entered the gateway along with them.
"Mere Royaume! Mere Royaume!" The name rang savagely in the groining of the arch, echoed dully in the obscurity in which the fierce struggle went on.