new trenches cut for them, as well as requesting that Metz send further cannon. Four cannon fired on a single tower for a whole hour, leaving it looking more like a dovecote, and when a breach was made in the wall the French troops threw themselves into the gap and captured the tower. Vieilleville led 100-120 pioneers to begin a sap, then moved two cannon into it. These fired four or fire shot into the inside of the town, shaking the town wall. The day after Vieilleville "armed all his limbs, as if on the day of a battle, with greaves, knee guards, cuissots, breastplate, forearm and upper-arm guards and a helmet on his head, the visor lowered to the solerets, presented himself with his favourite troops, gendarmes and arquebusiers to enter the town or die [in the attempt]." The whole town came to fight off the first assault, which was repulsed, but thirty Frenchmen soon mounted a second one, getting into the town with the shout "France! France! The town is won!". Guise sounded a trumpet to summon a parley with the town's commander Jean Carrebe. He sent an envoy to inform him that if the defenders did not leave the town within three hours, Guise would allow his forces to hang everyone inside, including women and children. Carrebe returned the envoy stating his own terms but Guise refused, stating it was not up to the vanquished to dictate to the victors and firing five or six more shot at the town's houses. Carrebe then surrendered unconditionally and the Spanish soldiers and the town's inhabitants were allowed to leave it, but without full military honours (ie drum, trumpets, standards and no weapons except a sword). They left all their other weapons in the town and the French troops took possession of it on 23 June. Scépeaux proposed demolishing the town and its fortifications in reprisal for the destruction of Thérouanne in 1553, but Guise vetoed this. The inhabitants had defended it so fiercely that Guise did not allow a single one of them to stay and so the town had to be repopulated by some of the inhabitants of Metz, who bought the houses of Thionville. However, the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis the following year handed Thionville back to the Spanish, even though they had been in no position to re-capture it in the interim. The French left the town