It took us about seven days to make our preparations. We had also opened a trench so as to enable us to go down towards the town by zigzag communications screened from the guns of the besieged, across the gardens, olive woods, and broken fields, which were defended step by step by the enemy.

During this interval the leaders in the besieged city did their best to encourage the people, telling them that when the cold rainy season set in, the French would perish of various illnesses in their trenches, and that nothing was needed but sustained courage and steady perseverance. At the same time they urged the inhabitants to complete their preparations for the defence of their houses, the walls of which were loopholed from basement to roof, so that the inmates could fire into the streets.

Further to stimulate public spirit, rough gallows and lofty gibbets were erected in the market place and in the Calle de Cosso on which to hang those who showed any want of courage or who talked of surrendering, and a tribunal was organised for trying and condemning such culprits on the spot without appeal. The priests, moreover, threatened cowards with the Divine anger, whilst the chiefs of the various factions all pointed to the gibbets. Thus hemmed in on every side, the weakest citizens, inspired by fear, simulated an audacity quite wanting to them, and much against their will augmented the roll of the defenders, thus giving to them a power the strength of which it was difficult to estimate.

As for the women, they enrolled themselves into companies, which were divided amongst the different quarters of the town to be defended. The task assigned to them was to carry provisions, ammunition, and any aid needed to the combatants, to look after the wounded in the hospitals, to make cartridges; in a word, to supplement the efforts of the actual fighters wherever and however they could.

The beautiful young Countess Burida, the daughter of one of the highest families of Spain and of a noble character, had scarcely recovered from the fatigues she had incurred during the first siege, before she a second time placed herself at the head of the women of Saragossa, setting them an example of rare energy and devoted courage. The memory of the feats of arms she had already achieved was a spur to the ambition of all the other women, who admired her virtues and her piety, whilst they longed to emulate her heroism. Banded together into several corps, all under the orders of this valiant Amazon, the women of Saragossa also took an oath to perish with their children rather than yield.

Our soldiers meanwhile were full of health, vigour, and gaiety. For some few days they had had no salt, and several had been reduced to use their saltpetred cartridges to give a flavour to their soup. We had expected to get plenty of salt in a district called Salduba in Roman times on account of its salt mines; but we had no native guide to direct us, for every one had fled at our approach, abandoning their homes either for the town or to join guerrilla bands. Captain Ferussat, a very intelligent officer who had studied geology, was sent with a few of his men to try and find the mines, which it so greatly concerned us to discover.

After climbing up steep barren mountains for two whole days, during which he expected every moment to fall over some precipice or into the hands of insurgents who would strangle their prisoners, he discovered at a little distance from the Ebro, opposite Ulebo and the mouth of the Xalon, a little cave scarcely noticeable from outside, but with the ground without much trodden by visitors. He entered it cautiously and found the remains of the huge mass of rock salt which had perhaps been already worked for some two thousand years. On his return to camp with proofs of his valuable discovery, he was received with the greatest delight.

On the 29th General Junot, Duke of Abrantes, took command of the siege operations in place of Marshal Moncey, whom the Emperor needed elsewhere.

During the night of the 29th or 30th, General Lacoste had the trenches of the first parallel opened on the right bank, completing a great length before daybreak without being noticed by the enemy. For a long time the heat had been extraordinary for the time of year; the snow had melted in the Pyrenees, and the swollen Ebro overflowed its banks, breaking the bridge of boats constructed by us above the town, and some pontoons and débris carried down by the flood, fell upon the bridge of Saragossa. Palafox, governor of the town, was informed of this, and thinking to profit by our forces being divided, he gathered the larger portion of the garrison at the gates, and at eight o’clock in the morning of the 31st he made a formidable sortie with seven or eight columns under gallant leaders, attacking us all along our line on the right bank. But in spite of the boldness and impetuosity of their charge they were driven back at the point of the bayonet. An hour later they returned to the charge, directing their most persevering efforts on the parallel of the false attack opposite the Castillo of the Inquisition. They were unable to break in at that point. Their cavalry, however, was more successful, and falling upon one of our isolated posts which we had neglected to entrench, cut it to pieces. Palafox hastened to exaggerate this partial success with a view to rousing the enthusiasm of the besieged, and with great ceremony distributed to the brave fellows who had taken part in the sortie a number of medals which he had struck in the mint founded in Saragossa many centuries before.

On January 1, 1809, a well-sustained fire was kept up throughout the day from all the batteries of the place, backed by a sharp fusillade. In the two previous nights our diggers had finished some 2,000 yards of zigzag approaches and trenches, and we could debouch from the right or centre of the parallels so as to advance by means of flying saps. In spite, however, of all these external preparations, no event of any importance occurred until January 10, when Palafox made a vigorous night attack upon our batteries, succeeding in spiking two of our guns; but he was driven back, leaving sixty men dead in our trenches. On this occasion the General left behind him many copies of the proclamation he had addressed to our soldiers, hoping to induce some of them to desert. This proclamation was written in six languages, and urged those of every nation who had enlisted under our flag, whether ‘Dalmatians, Italians, Dutch, Poles, or Germans, to abandon a war which was a disgrace to them;’ but it provoked nothing but laughter from our troops.

Saragossa is cut in two by the Ebro, which receives two chief affluents, the Gallego from the north and the Huerba from the south, both of which flow through the eastern side of the town and fling themselves at the same elevation into the main stream, forming a kind of cross.

At about four o’clock on the 12th, when the palisades had been sufficiently broken or overthrown by our cannonade for a practicable breach to have been made below the partly destroyed convent of St. Joseph, Lacoste gave the signal for the assault.

Haxo, Lieutenant-Colonel of engineers, immediately dashed out of the trenches with a few companies of infantry and two field pieces, and advanced in such a manner as to drive the enemy behind their covered ways. This bold manœuvre took the Spanish so completely by surprise that they at once abandoned their outer works and retreated in disorder across the Huerba.

Lieutenant-Colonel Stahl, at the head of a few companies of light infantry, seized this moment to make a vigorous dash for the fort, but he found the ditch so deep that he could not go down into it. Whilst he was getting ready some ladders to make the descent and to reach the breach, Daguenèt, a captain of engineers, managed to get round the fort and to gain a little wooden bridge which the enemy had not had time to cut. By its means he managed to lead his little company of sappers up to the very entrance to the convent, the door of which he tried to break in with blows from hatchets. But the terrible fire from the place mowed down his soldiers from the rear, and he made them lie down flat on their faces on the bridge.

The enemy, thus attacked on every side, defended themselves with fury, and poured down their fire from the windows of every story and every chink or crevice in the walls. The shock of the various discharges brought down the ceilings on the devoted defenders, and many were crushed beneath the ruins. Terror and disorder spread from one group to another, and the fort, now no more than a mass of ruins encumbered with the mutilated remains of the dead, was carried by main force. In the heat of the combat the greater number of the defenders had fallen, and the survivors now either surrendered or escaped by jumping from the windows. The obstinate defence of this convent, and what it had cost us to take it, gave us some idea of all we should have to go through if we were ever to achieve the conquest of Saragossa.

On the other hand, the loss of their Convent of St. Joseph and of other outlying points, with the spread of epidemics within the walls, led the besieged to entertain the most gloomy forebodings as to the future. Palafox’s only notion of how to raise their spirits was by the spreading of false reports, and their credulity grew with their danger. He pretended that a messenger from his brother had brought very good news, and he had this news published in the Gazette of January 16. ‘General Reding,’ he said, ‘had destroyed the French armies in Catalonia, and was advancing to the relief of Saragossa at the head of 60,000 men. The English armies under Sir David Baird and Sir John Moore, with the force under the Marquis de la Romaña, had cut to pieces the army of Napoleon. Ney and Berthier had been killed, and Bonaparte was hemmed in on every side. The troops hastening to the succour of Saragossa were moreover bringing with them from Cadiz a huge convoy of piastres with which to recompense the brave defenders of the town. The Marquis de Lazan was laying France waste, and would bring to Saragossa the spoils of Toulouse.’

The people, eager to read every detail of the news, besieged the doors of the printing office in crowds, and took possession of the sheets as they issued from the press. Meanwhile the bells of all the churches were pealing at once: and the noise of the volleys of artillery and musketry, the beating of drums, the sound of all manner of musical instruments, many of them terribly discordant, mingled with shouts and yells of joy, penetrated even to our camp. The noise and the mocking jeers of the enemy, of the cause of which we were in complete ignorance, really almost made us a little uneasy, and we answered the volleys fired in the town with a rapid succession of bombs and bullets, hoping to do something to interrupt the fête; but the general illumination continued till nine o’clock at night, after which nothing broke the silence or relieved the darkness but the fire from our guns.

The state of things in our camp was now beginning to become very critical. Every night signals were fired and bonfires were lit by the peasants on all the mountains overlooking the town, with a view to encouraging the hopes of the besieged. The Spanish organised a general rising in Aragon, and tried to starve us out by cutting off our supplies. General Wathier had been sent by the Tortosa road with some 1,200 infantry and 600 cavalry to reconnoitre the district and procure provisions for us. He was attacked at Belchitte by 5,000 peasants, but he cut most of them down and pursued the rest as far as Alcanitz, where he found other forces assembled in great numbers. After a fierce struggle he took Alcanitz and gave it up to pillage. Nearer us armed bands and the peasants from the Soria mountains constantly threatened our hospitals, bakehouses, and other establishments at Alagon; and even the Pampeluna road, by which our ammunition wagons reached us, was never quite free from the enemy.

Some thousands of peasants – who, most fortunately for us, were badly led – one day suddenly flung themselves upon our outposts and caused a momentary panic; but the same kind of terror seized them a few minutes later on the approach of Marshal Mortier, who put them to flight; whilst Colonel Gasquet, who had been sent out to fetch provisions, met them on his way back, and killed 500 of them. He brought with him several flocks of merino sheep, valuable on account of the fineness of their wool. It did seem a pity to have to kill animals of so pure a breed to feed our troops.

Palafox’s brother, the Marquis de Lazan, succeeded in escaping from Saragossa a few days before to try and rouse the provinces and hasten the succour of the besieged town. He at the same time carried off some of the treasures in the Cathedral of Nuestra Señora del Pilar. He embarked with all these valuable objects in a boat on the Ebro, and, under cover of one of the darkest and longest nights of January, he managed to go down the river without being perceived. The English Colonel Doyle made a similar attempt to convey boats laden with muskets &c. to the besieged, fearing that they would run short of weapons and ammunition; but he was not so successful as the Marquis, for our guards seized the boats before daybreak quite close to the town.

Whilst waiting for reinforcements and relief, Palafox held his regular troops in reserve for difficult operations, sending out peasants only as sharpshooters. These peasants were all accustomed to poaching, and very good marksmen; but, either from laziness or want of audacity, they always would wait to get their meals before they attacked us, which gave us breathing time and enabled us to complete our trenches. We, too, wished to spare our men and ammunition, and we therefore replied as little as possible to the fire of the Spanish. The monks did not fail to look upon our silence as a conclusive proof of our weakness, and they united the peasants to harass us as much as possible. It was, in fact always under the leadership of some of the brethren that the peasants, spurred on by their example, roused themselves sufficiently to fire upon us.

One day a tall priest of venerable appearance, with a fine figure and of a dignified bearing, wearing his sacerdotal robes and upholding a crucifix, advanced towards us beyond the entrenchments of the suburbs. His confident manner was that of some inspired prophet who inwardly repeats the words, ‘O God, in Thee is my trust; bring Thou their evil designs to nought.’ When near enough to our outposts to make himself heard, he paused, and in a sonorous and confident voice he pronounced an eager exhortation to us to refrain from a useless attack upon a city under the divine protection of the Santísima Señora del Pilar. Again and again we shouted to him to desist from carrying out his courageous resolve; he persevered, and it was not until the sound of several shots fired in the air on every side interrupted him, that he gave up addressing an audience so very little disposed to listen to him. He returned to the town uninjured.

When General Junot, Duke of Abrantes, heard of the approaching arrival of Marshal Lannes, he was unable to conceal the annoyance it caused him. His readily aroused jealousy and excessive arrogance were really the first symptoms of a mental malady which was beginning to get a hold on him, although no one as yet suspected it. He did all he could to press on the taking of the city before another should arrive to deprive him of the glory to be won, and he ordered a general assault for the next day. On hearing of this, General Lacoste hastened to the Duke, and urged on him the imperative necessity of not departing from the orders given by the Emperor to avoid actual assaults with a view to sparing our men, and making more sure of a finally successful result. He represented to him the fact that the town contained no fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, every man amongst them able to carry arms, and therefore to be counted as a combatant, so that there were really at least 50,000 defenders, whilst we had but 16,000 troops opposite the town, the rest of the army being compelled to hold the country. He reminded him also of the skill and industry with which the people of Saragossa had converted their town into one huge fortress, and how eagerly they were now resorting to the same measures which had succeeded so well in the previous siege. He wound up by saying that he thought it his duty formally to oppose an operation which he felt sure would fail. The other leaders expressed their agreement with the opinion of General Lacoste. The Duke then flew into a regular fury, and after using several insulting epithets, he cried, ‘You are all my enemies, and in reserving the honour of the conquest of the town to the Marshal, you are traitors to me!’

General Lacoste replied with the greatest coolness, ‘Well, Monsieur le Duc, I hold you responsible for the failure sure to result from your action, and I shall go and tell the Emperor how it came about.’ This firmness caused D’Abrantes to change his purpose, and the assault was countermanded. It was on this same evening that the illumination of the town I have already described took place.

Several detachments from our army, which had been out to scour the country in search of provisions, returned exhausted with fatigue without having been able to bring anything back with them, for their convoys had been intercepted by the insurgents. Meanwhile Francesco Palafox, the young brother of the General, was trying to rouse the villages and arm the peasants of Valencia and Catalonia against us. Every one of an age to carry a weapon flocked to his banner, and he had soon a great army of half-savage men, all thoroughly inured to fatigue. Smugglers from infancy, used to hard living and sleeping on the ground, and accustomed to a wandering life beset with dangers, they flocked in ready to wage furious war on us. Our soldiers were often without meat and reduced to half-rations of bread. Our hospital at Alagon was already encumbered with sick and wounded, for whom we had neither food nor medicine. The whole country was in fact laid waste for some eight or ten leagues round Saragossa, and we were totally unable to procure any comforts for the sufferers.

Such was the state of things when Marshal Lannes arrived on January 22. His presence at once gave the necessary unanimity to our operations, for all felt the influence of his strong and unique personality. He set up his head quarters near the lock, and the very day of his arrival went round the whole of the extensive works already completed.

The Marshal told us that Marshal Victor had just obtained a great advantage at Ucles over the Duke of Infantado, and to celebrate this victory and the arrival of the new commander a grand volley was fired from all our batteries in the evening. The enemy replied all along the line for a couple of hours, after which complete silence reigned in the town throughout the night. Palafox, however, who had noted the fact that some of our troops had withdrawn, thought the moment favourable for retaking some of the outlying positions he had lost, and was quietly preparing a grand sortie.

At four o’clock in the morning a cannon shot gave the signal, and three strong columns issued from the gates known as the Quemada, Santa Engracia, and Del Partillo, and marched upon us silently and in good order. The first column, which directed its course towards the convent of St. Joseph, surprised the post protecting the little house of Aguilar on the banks of the Huerba. Our men, however, managed to escape, and General Leval, commanding the trench, retook the position, driving the enemy back as far as the town. The second column was more successful; it crossed the Huerba, which was fordable on the right and left of the bridge head, and with extraordinary audacity advanced for some 400 yards along the Monte Torrero road, crossing all our trenches as far as battery No. 5, where they killed our gunners at their posts and spiked their pieces. They were trying to push on yet farther, when the diggers and guards in the trenches, who had now joined forces, cut off their retreat, compelling them to withdraw in disorder. Thirty of the Spanish were killed, and as many others made prisoners. The third column met with such a vigorous resistance that it, as well as the others, returned to the town before daybreak.

Marshal Lannes thought it his duty to begin with an attempt at conciliation, and he sent an aide-de-camp to Palafox with instructions to inform him of the successes recently achieved by the French arms and to exhort him in the name of humanity to stop the bloodshed. He offered the most honourable terms to the town if it would capitulate.

Saint-Marc, the young officer chosen as envoy, was a good-looking young fellow with a fine figure and charming manners. He wore the brilliant costume in the Hungarian style, gleaming with gold lace and braid, already described, and his approach to the Spanish outposts was announced by the blowing of a trumpet. At first there was great unwillingness to receive him, but after a long delay a body of cavalry came to escort him into the town. His eyes were bandaged, and he was led through all the longest streets, an immense crowd thronging about him everywhere, shouting, ‘Ahorcadle! matadle!’ (hang him! kill him!) But now and then the quick ears of the young officer, who was painfully on the alert, caught amongst these ferocious cries the words, ‘Buen mozo hermoso!’ (a handsome, graceful fellow). Some of the people were evidently struck with the easy grace of Saint-Marc, whose uniform and richly caparisoned steed set him off to the best advantage. A visiting patrol came in the nick of time to protect the envoy on his way to the interview with Palafox, who received him in the Palace of the Inquisition. He was led in and made to traverse the long winding passages of the gloomy building in solemn and mysterious silence. At last he was allowed to stop, his eyes were uncovered, and he was left alone in a room hung with black, opposite a fine picture, by Velasquez, of Christ on the Cross. In view of his funereal surroundings and after all that had just occurred, he began to think that he was to be submitted to the rough tests of free-masonry, or that he might even be in one of the rooms sacred to the Tribunal of the Holy Office itself, which, as is well known, persecuted the brethren and punished with death those who belonged to the Grand Order of Masons.

At last, after a dreary hour of waiting, the whole of which he passed opposite the melancholy memento mori in the place from which so many had issued but to go to their execution, Saint-Marc was relieved to see Palafox, the young Governor of Saragossa, come in accompanied by several officers and the members of the Junta. He presented the letter from the French Marshal, saying that his Excellency had instructed him to beg the Governor to spare the blood of two nations which had every reason to be friends.

Palafox replied that the garrison and the whole population of Saragossa were at one with him in their determination rather to be buried beneath the ruins of their town than to yield. After this he left the envoy alone again for several hours, Saint-Marc's gloomy reflections making them appear even longer than they were. The fact was that Palafox, though he said nothing of his kind intentions to the young French officer, really detained him till night to save him from the fanatics who clamoured for him to be given up to them. At last, however, a letter for the Marshal was given to him, his eyes were bandaged again, and he was taken under a strong escort back to the outposts.

The despatch ran as follows: ‘M. le Maréchal, I know the number of troops besieging me, and ten times as many would be required to compel me to yield. My town will glory in her ruins. The General in command does not know what fear is, and will never submit. The enclosed Gazette will make known to you the position in which I am placed.’ That Gazette was a copy of the one the General had had printed on January 16 with a view to raising the spirits of the besieged by the publication of false reports.

Palafox’s refusal compelled us to prosecute the siege with vigour, and the Marshal told us once more that he had orders from the Emperor to use every possible despatch, undermining and blowing up the houses so as to intimidate the inhabitants. We therefore prepared to cross the Huerba. The steep banks, entirely exposed on our side, were raked by the artillery and musketry of the place, which was but a little distance off. The descent of the ditch to get down to the bed of the river, and cross it by means of two trestle bridges with epaulments of gabions and fascines, was therefore one of the most perilous operations of the siege. This work, requiring the utmost skill and courage, was, however, soon successfully achieved, but it cost us the lives of several of our best officers.

At another point all was well arranged for facilitating our communications between the two banks of the Ebro. The bridge of boats thrown across the upper Ebro above the town by General Dedon, of the artillery, had been broken on December 30, but it was already repaired and was strong enough for the passage of our heavy artillery. The other flying bridge across the lower Ebro below the town consisted of two strong boats connected by a platform, over which two twelve-pounders could be dragged at one time. With the aid of these two bridges, therefore, we could easily go right round Saragossa, the blockade of which was complete.

The work of the engineers on the right bank of the river was divided into three assaults, each led by an able man of proved and brilliant valour. Haxo commanded the assault between the Ebro and the Convent of St. Joseph, Prost’s forces were in the centre between the Calle Quemada and the Convent of Santa Engracia, whilst Henri led the left wing threatening the Convent of the Trinity and the Inquisition as far as the river.

Sixty pieces of cannon and twelve mortars were directed against the houses which were to be the first attacked, with a view to dislodging the besieged; but in spite of the terrible fire from them, the intrepidity of the Spanish was such that at the very moment when a shell made a breach in the wall of some house, its inhabitants would turn the hole to account as a loophole for firing on their assailants, although a second shell might at any moment bury them beneath the shattered walls of their home; and everywhere we saw barricades being erected amongst the ruins.

Our sentinels were very vigilant, and we were quite at a loss to discover how the besieged got any encouraging news from without. I must just mention here one clever contrivance to which they resorted, though we did not find out about it till long after the siege was over.

Julian Perez, one of the many smugglers of the Pyrenees, who found himself shut up in the besieged town, made his dog the medium of getting news for Palafox. He had a hairy collar made of the same colour as the skin of the dog, and stitched beneath it, in such a manner that it was very difficult to discover the writing, were the words, ‘Send us some news.’

The faithful animal reluctantly submitted to his master’s will when one night he sternly ordered him to go home alone. He started, and unnoticed made his way through the French lines, reaching Barbastro in safety, where the wife of Perez lived. Three times the wife placed messages beneath the hairy collar, twice the poor dog, whose very name of Mira meant beware, got safely back to Saragossa, but the third time his thigh was broken by a bullet, and he went to Barbastro no more.

The arrival of the Marshal had acted as a great spur to our energies. Our little body of cavalry behaved splendidly, driving the insurgents harassing us to a distance. Several breaches were apparently becoming practicable, and the fire from our batteries had partly destroyed the Convents of Saints Augustine and Monica on our right, of Santa Engracia in the centre, and of the Capuchins on the left, the last three named abutting upon the ramparts of the outer enceinte. Major Breuille, commanding the miners, now announced that very long mine branches, which it had been most difficult to establish beneath the rampart, had been pushed up to the very foot of the Convent of Santa Engracia, and that huge powder chambers were charged capable of completely demolishing the front of the building. Everything was therefore ready, and the Marshal ordered a grand attack on these three principal points.

General Habert, who was to deliver the assault, assembled his troops in the trenches at daybreak. He gave the command of the first column on the right to Lieutenant-Colonel Stahl, that of the centre to a captain, and that of the left to Colonel Chlopiski. Each column had at the head an engineer officer and sixty sappers. The brigade of General Brun was held in reserve, and the Morlot division was to make a false attack beyond the Del Carmen gate, so as to divide the forces of the besieged or repulse sorties.

At noon, the fog which had partially hidden the town from us having cleared away, the signal was given to fire the mines of Santa Engracia, and our troops dashed into the open to cross the wide rampart and ascend to the assault. All the bells in the town sounded the alarm at once, the people rushed to the points attacked and poured a hail of shot and hand grenades upon us. At the same moment the enemy fired three mines prepared by them beneath the path we had to cross on our way to each of the three breaches, but we passed so rapidly that we escaped the explosions, which hurt none of us. Everywhere we managed to get a footing, although behind each opening the enemy had established batteries which riddled us with grape shot, whilst all the walls bristled with enraged defenders.

After scaling the breach, which really was scarcely practicable, we found ourselves arrested at the top by the wall of a garden rising more than ten feet above the ground on the other side. The neighbouring terraces were covered with troops and artillery which would completely crush us. We had to get out of this altogether untenable position as quickly as possible, and try a second assault on some of the positions occupied by the Spaniards. We flung ourselves forward and charged with the bayonet. In this second assault a Spaniard dealt me a blow with the butt of his musket, which wounded my face and rendered me insensible. A few moments later I regained consciousness, and went to wash away the blood in the water of the Huerba, quickly rejoining the right column, to which I belonged. Meanwhile a footing had been obtained upon the breaches, and several of the neighbouring houses had been taken, the doors and walls having been staved in, though the courts were so raked with the fire of the enemy that they were quite impassable.

In the attack of the centre, the mines laid by Major Breuille under the rampart flung down some half of the walls of the Convent of Santa Engracia. The Poles of the Second Vistula Regiment, commanded by Chlopiski and directed by Rogniat, colonel of engineers, had been divided into several small detachments, which were taken into action one after the other, to avoid confusion. These heads of columns traversed at a run some 200 exposed yards, and dashed impetuously on to the ruins of the first wall of the enclosure, which had been flung down for a considerable length. A second wall behind the first had only been damaged by the breaking open of the breach some eight or ten feet wide, and the guns of the 1,200 defenders of the convent were all pointed on it and pouring forth a hot fire. The first of our brave fellows to arrive, Captain Segond, of the engineers, and Captain Negrodski, flung themselves head foremost upon the breach, and were followed by all the men of the Vistula Regiment, who came on like enraged lions, flung themselves into the opening, and defiled beyond it. A terrible struggle now took place in every part of the convent, monks, soldiers, peasants, even women and children, urging each other on, and disputing every inch of ground, defending themselves from the top to the bottom of the stairs, from corridor to corridor, from room to room, entrenching themselves behind bales of wool or even piles of books, and from every point pouring out a murderous fire. One of the Poles was actually killed on the stairs by a monk with blows from a crucifix. For all that, however, the Spanish were driven back beyond the Capuchin Convent, of which we remained masters. Even six fougasses, which the enemy blew up under our feet, did not arrest us, and we pursued them into the ruins of the adjacent houses, on which also other batteries opened fire, doing us a good deal of damage. We suffered most cruelly from the musket shots fired from the top of the neighbouring belfries, where the best marksmen, who never missed their aim, were stationed.

I was crossing the heaps of ruins resulting from the explosion in the court of the Santa Engracia Convent, with Generals Lacoste and Valazé, on the way to attack the Capuchin Convent, when I was badly wounded in the shoulder by a ricochet ball, which caused a most painful choking sensation. This second wound placed me hors de combat for several days. As I was being supported over the débris of the ruined cloister, my helpers paused for a moment on the scene of carnage, opposite to a white cross rising above a marble group representing the dead Christ in His grave clothes across the knees of His Mother, who was praying at the foot of the cross. Her eyes were uplifted to heaven, but her hands were extended towards the ground, and her grief-stricken expression, with her lips half opened as if to speak, appeared to say, ‘Almighty God, Thou didst not give life to human creatures for them to destroy each other; oh, appease their homicidal rage, pardon their fatal errors, even as my Son forgave His enemies.’ A thick cloud of dust and smoke, which had been whirled by the wind round about the statue, formed a kind of aureole, and the figure of the Mother seemed to move. The mist partly hid the dead and dying, whose blood was dropping on the steps of the pedestal; and the sad realities of the awful scene were to me like some sublime and unexpected vision, to which I accorded an involuntary admiration. My weakened brain led me to see the hand of Providence held out to me from the midst of the cloud, and I besought protection from the Almighty. As I did so, Valazé came up, bringing me a few drops of wine in a leather bottle he had found in the ruined convent. The drink restored me, and my wound was not, after all, serious.

The attack on the Trinitarian ¹ Convent on the left was even more fierce than that on the centre. Thirty of our carabineers stationed on watch at the entrance to the bridge noticed that the Spanish were running away, and without a moment’s hesitation they dashed after them in pursuit, and climbed several of the enemy’s entrenchments, getting in through the embrasures. At first they overthrew everything before them, killing the artillerymen at their guns, and rushing along the ramparts shouting, ‘Forward! forward!’ But a hot fire was poured on the brave fellows from every side; many of them were struck down, and their numbers were rapidly diminishing, when a battalion of guards beyond the Huerba, seeing their danger and unable to contain themselves, crossed the river at double-quick pace, and scaling the ramparts flew to the aid of the carabineers, dashing with the flying enemy into the Trinitarian Convent. The Spanish, however, who had yielded to a momentary panic only, now rallied, and hastily turning back spread into the neighbouring houses, from which they opened a murderous fire at close quarters upon our troops, who were exposed all along the rampart. Our ranks were greatly thinned, and our zeal considerably cooled. The enemy saw their advantage. General Mori came up with considerable reinforcements, and we were driven back on to the Trinitarian Convent, which was retaken by the Spanish general. Morlot, commanding our reserve, seeing our disorder, hurried up to our support in the nick of time with two of his battalions. The shock of their onslaught was terrible, and the number of dead piled up on the scene of the conflict was very great. In the end we made more than 600 prisoners, and took fifteen pieces of cannon, which we turned against the besieged from their position on the ramparts. Several officers of great merit lost their lives on both sides, and General Mori was found amongst the dead. Captain Segond, an interesting young French engineer, from whom we had hoped great things, was surprised and killed almost at close quarters by a priest who was hidden behind a pile of stones amongst the ruins of Santa Engracia. He was the son of one of our most distinguished chiefs, and his death was a great grief to his family and to all his brother officers.

¹ The Trinitarians were a monastic order, founded to rescue Christian captives from the power of the Mahomedans. – Trans.

It was at the end of this terrible day that a Carmelite monk named San Yago Saas, who had distinguished himself in the previous siege as a brilliant leader and ardent preacher, boasted that he had himself butchered seventeen Frenchmen. Sword in hand, sleeves flung back over the shoulders, leaving the arms bare, robe tucked up, and splashed with blood from head to foot, the furious monk ran to and fro in the ranks saying to each soldier, ‘Follow my example, and there won’t be one of them left.’ And on the morning of the same day the famous Maid of Saragossa, Augustina Sarzella, reappeared amongst the troops, and by her valour won the appointment of commander of a company of the intrepid women led by Doña Burida. The Maid of Saragossa had long practised pointing cannon and firing muskets, and her skill was only equalled by her intrepidity. During the first siege, which had lasted from June to August in 1808, as she was taking provisions to a battery which was suffering so terribly that the gunners were discouraged, she flung herself amongst the dead and dying, tore a linstock from the hands of an expiring artilleryman, put the match to a twenty-four pounder and springing upon the cannon vowed she would not leave it alive. This heroic deed so encouraged the Spanish that they took fresh heart and opened fire on us with renewed vigour.

We spent the following night in barricading our position with the aid of bales of wool, gabions, and sacks of earth, of which we made traverses. In clearing away the dead bodies of the Spanish which encumbered the ground we came upon the corpse of a young monk still clasping in his hands the pyx containing the sacred wafers he had been courageously carrying to the dying in the midst of the carnage, with a view to encouraging the living to resist to the end by showing them that they would receive spiritual succour at the last.

This arduous day, which had cost us the lives of 600 men, had left us masters of the most important positions on a third of the ramparts, and henceforth we were firmly established in one portion of the city itself. The Spanish general, however, far from being discouraged by the losses he had sustained and by the ill success of the incredible efforts he had made on the 27th, counted all the incidents which had occurred as so many victories.

Meanwhile illness was beginning to weaken the besieged; and to keep up the moral courage of those whom suffering rendered irritable and difficult to lead, the Junta, which might more justly have been called the Tribunal of Terror, punished the slightest misdemeanour with pitiless severity. Neither age nor rank saved from death those suspected of cowardice, and a single hour witnessed trial, condemnation, and execution. Every morning the people saw fresh victims hanging from the rows of gibbets on the Corso. The heart of Palafox was torn by all these sufferings, but Bazile and the other ferocious leaders of the Junta were inflexible. The clergy all around by order of that same Junta organised processions, offered up many prayers, and announced many false miracles, in all of which, however absurd they might be, the people, whose superstition made them incredibly gullible, firmly believed, so that, confident in the visible support of Heaven, their courage and zeal were revived.

The war was now carried on in the very streets of Saragossa, and Lacoste did all in his power to push farther into the town without exposing his troops, knowing full well how discouraging continual losses are. We therefore advanced very slowly but very surely with the aid of the sapper and the miner. As soon as a house was taken, a miner was sent down to the lowest part of the cellars, where he set to work to open a mine beneath the street or under the next house so as to reach the one we meant to attack. This mine was then charged in the most profound silence, and with such skill that the line of least resistance was beneath the condemned house. Directly after the explosion the soldiers, who were held in readiness, flung themselves through the clouds of dust which arose, and took possession of the ruins of the house just thrown down, where to secure possession they quickly barricaded themselves and awaited the night. Then under cover of the darkness they brought in sacks of earth and bales of wool, anything in fact which could serve as epaulments or mantlets, and render more secure our communications in the streets between one block of houses and another.

Every one displayed the greatest eagerness in these dangerous operations, following the example of General Lacoste, whose admirable courage was that of a man of thought as well as action. His talents and amiable character won the esteem and affection of every one, and under his leadership the artillery and engineers worked admirably together, achieving great successes. Unfortunately, however, the army and his personal friends were soon to mourn his loss.

On the 28th the enemy tried without success to retake the Trinitarian Convent. They were also driven back on the 29th, but on these two days our engineers lost six officers and thirty-eight men.

Under the indefatigable Colonel San Genis the Spanish bored holes in every partition and ceiling of their houses, through which to take aim from one story to another. We could hear them breaking up the staircases to use them as barricades, replacing them with ladders, which could be drawn up. Each household in its own particular stronghold laid up stores of hand grenades and shells, which could easily be rolled down on the assailants, with plenty of powder, balls, and stones, whilst priests and women with arms in their hands circulated to and fro beneath a hail of bullets, and even with astonishing audacity headed an attack on our troops in the Capuchin Convent, hoping to drive them out. But all this fury was of no avail against the cooler courage of our seasoned troops, who soon found themselves sheltered behind piles of dead bodies.

Lacoste was very anxious that the works opposite the suburb on the left bank of the Ebro should progress as rapidly as ours were doing in the town itself; but the division under Gazan, which was threatened on every side, had merely established a blockade and had not yet been able to complete the works necessary for the circumvallation of the suburb or for the contravallation of his own position to protect it from attacks from outside. The Marshal therefore went with General Lacoste and myself to push on the works, and the following night (that of January 31 and February 1) the trenches were opened with a first parallel encircling and threatening the Capuchin Convent. A few days later the fire from twenty pieces of cannon was breaking in its strong fortifications.

On his way back to the town the Marshal gave us fresh cause to admire his wonderful self-possession in the midst of danger. Instead of returning under cover of the deep trenches, he led us across the open within half range of the place, and climbed a mound so as to get a better view of his surroundings. As he was quietly giving us his orders, several shots aimed at his brilliant uniform passed through our cloaks, and one of our officers was wounded. We all at once jumped into the trench, but the Marshal remained motionless and went on speaking to me. It would have been very bad manners on my part to listen to him from a distance, so I climbed up beside him again. It was not until he had said all he wanted to say that he slowly drew back into the trench, where we took the liberty of representing to him that we thought this example of temerity was scarcely needed with troops of such proved courage as ours, and that in thus exposing himself he ran a risk of depriving us of a very able chief at a most critical moment of our undertaking.

In the Gazan camp the fatigue of the troops was extreme. Neither officers nor men were relieved for a single night till they had passed seventy-two hours in the trenches. Food was often very scarce, but in spite of all these drawbacks there was very little illness, as the weather was fine and dry. Most of our soldiers would have preferred fighting twenty battles in the open to working for a single day in the trenches. They were taken there in silence in the dead of the night, with or without their arms, according to circumstances. If they had their weapons they were stacked in piles in some safe place under a strong guard. Picks and spades were then given out to the men by their officers, who placed them in groups at a distance of about three or four feet from each other on a line marked out, and ordered them as they dug to throw the earth out in front without making any noise, or they would provoke the fire of the enemy. When the poor fellows, worn out with several nights passed in this task, were sufficiently protected from the direct fire of the place (and they worked very quickly, so eager were they for rest), they would fling themselves down, their danger and toil at an end at the same moment, and fall into a sleep so deep that even the sound of the firing of cannon did not wake them. They were still, however, exposed to sorties, to the bursting of shells, bombs, grenades, and fireballs, flung amongst them by the enemy with a view to lighting up the place where they were concealed, so as to take proper aim at them. They had also to dread being crushed beneath the showers of stones hurled from the swivel guns of the besieged, but they slept on as peacefully through the hurly-burly of all these plunging fires and death-dealing projectiles as the sailor after a storm upon the waves which threaten to engulf him at any moment; troubling themselves not at all with the thought that for some of them this delicious sleep might be eternal.

Such is, now and then, the life of the infantry soldier during a siege; but for the sapper there is absolutely no break in the dangers to be met at every turn, for he has to work under the direct fire of the enemy in the open as he goes down some counterscarp, and to brave all, manner of vaguely aimed projectiles as he rolls some gabion before him when he is about to open a sap or finish off a trench. Imagine how great must have been the skill and coolness of the engineers who during the last sixteen years had thus taken possession of all the chief strongholds of Europe!

But the example of patient perseverance set by the engineers was quite equalled by that of the artillery officers, whose courage and zeal, directed by thoroughly scientific acumen, never wavered, in spite of the terrible fatigue and privation involved in the task they had undertaken.

The Spanish engineers really seemed to rival our own in their skill, courage, and perseverance. By an unexpected stroke of fate the French and Spanish armies lost in one day two chiefs of engineers, both interesting young fellows, who had done much to contribute, by their eager initiative, to the success of the works on both sides. Just before Colonel San Genis was killed at the Palafox battery, he had said to his officers, ‘If there is ever any question of capitulation, don’t call me to your counsels, for I will find some means of defending you to the death.’ Whilst availing himself of every resource known in the science of engineering to avert the dangers threatening his fellow citizens, by whom he was loved and respected, he was equally eager to place his mother in safety. His affections were, in fact, divided between his mother and his country, and he was carried when dying to the arms of the parent he loved so well. She wept bitterly over the changed features of her son, but had the melancholy satisfaction of receiving his last sigh. Less fortunate than San Genis, Lacoste, abandoned by the good fortune which had attended him in the assaults of Cairo, Saint Jean d’Acre in Syria, and Gaeta in Italy, was to fall in a foreign land, far from his father and the wife he adored, with no honour but that of having served his country at a distance.

Lacoste had ordered two mines to be charged, each with 2,000 pounds of powder, one in front of Santa Engracia, and the other about a hundred paces from it on the left. To insure the attacks following the explosions being simultaneous, he decided to lead that on the left himself, confiding the other, on the right, to me. As we were going down together from our camp on Monte Torrero, about noon on February 1, he spoke to me of the young wife whom he loved passionately, and told me that though they had been married a year, he had only been able to spend five days with her. He added how much he wished to retire from the Emperor’s service and live quietly at home, cheered by the dear presence of his father, his wife, and the children he hoped would be born to him; and whilst calling up a picture of a life full of home joys, we reached the batteries.

Haxo had just taken the Convent of St. Augustine, where several breaches had been opened by our miners before daybreak. At two o’clock in the afternoon, when all had seemed perfectly quiet in that part of the town, the shouts of a vast multitude approaching, with the sound of the tocsin summoning the people to arms, made us hastily resume our weapons. It was Palafox advancing at the head of some eight or ten thousand furious men, eager to retake the houses occupied by us. Their attack was so vigorous that we lost a good deal of ground, but we retained possession of the convent, protected by the entrenchments made by Haxo’s orders.

It was just at this juncture that Lacoste and I arrived from Monte Torrero. We first traversed the blood-stained ruins of the convent just taken by Haxo, and then pressed on to join the centre under Prost.

Lacoste, who could not help feeling full of pity for the luckless enemies who were to perish in the explosions, prepared for as described above, tried to drive the Spanish out of the threatened houses, by placing a few mortars behind an epaulment near them and discharging some bombs from them. Just then a ball crossed the bale of wool behind which we were hiding, grazed Lacoste’s forehead, and carried off a lock of his fair hair. Laughing at this incident, he said to me, alluding to our talk on the way down from the mountain, ‘If only that lock of hair had been for her!’ and we separated, each to go to his own post.

He had ordered me to set fire to my powder two minutes after I heard the explosion of his, which would be in about a quarter of an hour by our watches, which tallied exactly. My dispositions were made, and we all listened for nearly forty minutes without hearing anything. I sent to inquire the cause of the delay, and my messenger returned to say that all had succeeded admirably, and we were to fire our mine at once. I gave the order immediately; a whole block of ten or twelve houses were precipitated into the air, and a dull muffled sound reached us. As soon as the dust had cleared away sufficiently for us to distinguish objects and recognise each other, Prost flung forward the Poles who were to attack. At this moment Lacoste and Valazé arrived to witness our charge. We climbed through the window of a house near, so as to get under cover amongst the ruins. Our shouts of ‘Houra! houra!’ to urge the Poles forward, aroused the attention of the Spanish, who fired on us through almost invisible holes. General Lacoste and Captain Lalobe, who had followed us, were both mortally wounded in the forehead. The latter died on the spot, and Lacoste survived but a few hours.

This event saddened the whole army, to whom the General was very dear; and the Marshal, who shared the general mourning, announced to the Emperor the great loss sustained in the death of this skilful engineer, who had been full of resource, and whose calm and cheerful demeanour in the midst of the greatest dangers had secured the success of all he undertook. The Marshal appointed Colonel Rogniat to the command of the engineers, vacant by the death of General Lacoste.

All the woodwork and other combustible parts of the houses surrounding us in this attack on the centre were by order of our new colonel smeared with tar and set fire to, and this burning barrier separated us for some days from the Spanish, who were as eager and indomitable as ourselves. They seemed to look upon it as an amusement to practise their skill in taking aim at us, and they were such good marksmen and fired so quickly that the shakos of our soldiers were riddled with bullets directly they appeared above the parapet of the trenches. This made the task of our engineers extremely dangerous, and Haxo, one of our bravest generals, was so worried by the perpetual firing whilst he was at work, that he took exception to my height, and grumbled at me because when I was near him in the trenches I drew down the fire of the enemy, my scarlet helmet, with its gold ornaments and white aigrette, forming a capital mark. The Spanish were so skilful and persevering in this artillery practice, that they actually succeeded in making breaches with it in the walls which they were not otherwise able to injure, and which they thought served as a protection to us. In some parts of the trenches we might have picked up bushelfuls of lead used in this manner.

Rogniat soon found that the houses which had been completely thrown down in the explosions were no real shelter to us, and that our men ran many dangers in crossing the exposed ruins on their way to attack the neighbouring buildings. He therefore had the charges so laid that only the wall next to us was destroyed, in each case leaving the others standing, to serve as a cover to us when we took possession. Heavily charged chambers were henceforth only fired to throw down the walls of the large buildings, which served as something like citadels in the interior of the town.

The experience gained day by day in this extraordinary kind of warfare served to teach us much in every way, and our prudence and method alike grew greater and greater. Directly a house was taken, it was converted into a fortress with the aid of sacks of earth used to wall up the openings on the side of the enemy, whilst we pierced a straight line of interior communications which we could prolong successively into each house occupied. Loopholes were then made opposite those of the enemy, and we soon became nearly as clever in this style of aiming from room to room as were the Spanish themselves.

In the centre our miners were preparing three chambers at the base of the Convent of Jerusalem with a view to blowing it up, when they heard noises beneath them which told them that the enemy was countermining them. They at once charged one of the fourneaux and fired it lest they should be anticipated. The Spanish miners, including one officer and fifteen men, perished miserably, buried beneath the masses of earth which fell on them, and our sappers began making fresh galleries. The courage and calmness with which the military miner braves danger and fatigue are alike admirable. Whilst he is patiently hollowing out the tomb of the enemy’s sappers, it often happens that he is separated from them by but the thinnest layer of earth. Whilst some slight noise or movement reveals to him that his enemies are compassing his destruction close beside him, he is not standing up, he cannot confront his enemy in a proud attitude of defiance, the eyes of the army are not upon him to raise his courage and redouble his strength. He is often alone, stretched flat on his face on the ground, or crouching in a cramped position, and he sometimes succumbs, suffocated for want of air. It is often when he is but half alive that he is called to the struggle. What Bayard, what Murat would not find his courage ebb away if he had to submit to being shut up for days in the cold subterranean galleries, where the miners noiselessly creep along to prepare the mine they are to fire? Their disinterestedness was equal to their courage, and in this memorable siege I knew instances of men who, whilst driving horizontal galleries at a depth of some twenty feet underground, broke with their picks antique vases full of gold, silver, and bronze coins, which the Carthaginians, Romans, or Arabs had buried in times of similar calamities. It would have been natural enough if the miner’s cupidity had been aroused by the gleam of the metal in the light of his lamp; but not a bit of it he would simply push the treasure and the loosened earth behind him to the next worker, with the words, ‘Here, pass Peru to the Captain; it will amuse him.’ Captain Veron-Réville was a connoisseur of coins, and in this way he received a good many very rare medals, several of them found at the foot of an old Roman wall, the hard cement of which bothered our miners a good deal.

Money had been coined in Saragossa for many centuries, and that city owns a most interesting collection of coins. Captain Veron-Réville noticed that the part of the town on which we were working was founded on an old bed of shingle or large pebbles which had been rolled over and over by the Ebro, and was now covered with a layer of from ten to fifteen feet of good alluvial soil. This shingle bed was not without danger to us, although it contained no flint, for it could not be broken up without making a noise which might be heard by the enemy.

Colonel Rogniat found it prudent to make on our line a point of support to meet all contingencies. Between February 2 and 6, therefore, he made an epaulment with sacks of earth at the breach in the Capuchin Convent, so as to fortify us in it. Artillery was also stationed there to reply to that massed by the enemy at this point.

In our attack on the right we stretched along the Calle de Quemada almost to the College, crossing the street by means of three subterranean galleries, so as to establish an equal number of chambers under the mines opposite. One of these galleries debouched into an unoccupied cellar, through which our miners and sappers were able to go up into the house above. Once established there they could help us to get into the whole block. (We called any group of houses surrounded by streets a block.)

We crossed the Calle del Medio by a double epaulment of sacks of earth, and established ourselves on the other side in a block of houses which had been undermined in the first siege. In this affair Rogniat had a finger taken off by a bullet, but his wound only kept him out of the trenches for two days, during which I took his place. Morlet, a lieutenant of engineers, who had already performed many brilliant feats of arms, was dangerously wounded at the same moment as Rogniat, whilst Brenne, another lieutenant of engineers, received three bullets.

Every day it became more difficult to protect ourselves from all these shots. The streets of the quarters into which we penetrated grew narrower and narrower, and we were almost at close quarters with the Spanish, who riddled with balls the barricades, planks, doors, windows, and shutters, behind which they thought we might be. In a few moments every protection was pierced with holes like those in lace, and woe betide any one who happened to be on the other side.

In some streets there was not room to place our pieces of cannon and howitzers, and we even had to dismount our little six-inch mortars before we could get them into position. Our artillerymen got over these difficulties with surprising skill and speed, but then the discharge brought the windows, tiles, chimney pots, and sometimes even the walls, down about their heads. These falls of débris worried them dreadfully, and to safeguard themselves against them it was necessary to blind and protect several batteries with beams.

Haxo's skill and unwearying activity, however, daily won us many successes in the attack on the right, and he was already master of nearly all the blocks of houses opposite the Convents of St. Augustine and St. Monica. Two pieces of heavy calibre were pounding a breach in a tower on the Corso, whilst a howitzer at the end of the Calle del Quemada enfiladed the wide opening made by them. All the walls on the enemy’s side were loopholed, and covered galleries had been pierced in every story of the houses, and passages or crossings had been established in all the streets between two epaulments. Everything was pressed into the service, and I actually saw sacks of corn, bales of the fine wool in which Saragossa does such a large business in times of peace, and even books from the libraries of the convents piled up in great numbers; the big volumes telling at length the marvellous legends of the martyrs, and the parchment folios were most useful to us. Books can be as easily piled up as bricks; and some on end, others laid down flat, they formed a perfect protection from balls. Many of our men owed their lives to the thickness of the history of some saint, whose piety they would never have dreamt of imitating. Nor was this way of destroying valuable tomes and priceless manuscripts the most distressing sight of the kind we had to witness, for during the night our soldiers, who had no wood to make fires at which to warm themselves, burnt books for the purpose, or tore out the leaves to make torches with which to grope about in the labyrinths of rubbish where they might so easily have hurt themselves. Our cultured officers grieved over this vandalism and tried to prevent it, but wood was not much used in the buildings of Saragossa, and it was often very difficult to get less costly combustibles for the use of the men. It was even more hopeless to make them understand the value of Greek, Latin, Arab, and other antique volumes, which they recklessly tore to pieces to burn. ‘These musty old books,’ they would say, ‘are fit for nothing but lighting fires; we don't understand a word in them.’ Thus was lost a very valuable collection of manuscripts, including many original historical documents of very great antiquity, of which but a few scattered leaves were recovered.

The attack of the centre, led by Prost, began with a vigorous assault on the Convent of the Nuns of Jerusalem, and Palafox, too much hemmed in by walls to attempt sorties, contented himself, as he had done before, with setting fire to the houses he could no longer defend. In an instant the convent was wrapped in flames, and Prost, taking it for granted that the fire was a proof of the retreat of the Spanish, at once seized the favourable moment to dash through the huge blazing furnace with his sappers and light infantry. He penetrated into the convent, where he came pell-mell upon the enemy, and giving them no time to defend themselves, he pursued them with the greatest intrepidity into every part of the building, of which he finally remained master. During this bloody conflict the flames continued to rage, burning dead and wounded together, and reducing half the convent to cinders.

Never shall I forget the effect produced on me by the appearance of the inside of that convent, of which I caught sight across thick clouds of dust and smoke. The cells of the nuns, once havens of peace and of prayer, were now the scene of an awful struggle. In this hour of desolation the assailants were trampling not only on the rush mats which had been the sole furniture in the retreats of the austere and devoted women, but on all the sacred symbols of their religion, such as rosaries, holy-water vessels, amulets, &c. At every step in the various oratories I came upon implements of penance, such as iron scourges with sharp edges, bearing witness to the severity of the discipline of the nuns, even as the needlework also scattered upon the floors did to the eager charity with which they had laboured for the poor. Some few of these devotees, surprised in their flight, had been detained by the female warriors of the town, and had remained with them amongst the defenders. As we approached we saw them tearing down from the altars the objects of their chaste devotion, in the hope of saving them from desecration. The devoted women, with no thought for themselves and inspired only with religious zeal, took nothing with them but crucifixes and images of the Infant Saviour, which they held closely in their arms as they abandoned with heartrending cries the only homes they had, strewn with tokens of their piety and loving kindness. In all the chapels were numerous pretty little figures in coloured wax representing the Infant Jesus, with snow-white lambs all decked with ribbons and various tasty ornaments invented by the childlike imagination of the guileless nuns. Wounded soldiers fell across mangers decked with flowers, evergreens, and moss, or overturned cradles of the Infant Saviour; and the blood of the dying trickled over bunches of immortelles, crowns of roses, and azure blue ribbons.

As soon as we were firmly established in the Convent of the Nuns of Jerusalem, Breuille led his miners towards two huge buildings, the Convent of St. Francis and the Hospital for Foreigners, which still separated us on this side of the town from the Corso. The work of the miners in this protracted siege now became everywhere more formidable and arduous than ever. One day it so happened that two parties of miners – one besieged, the others besiegers – debouched at the same moment from their rival galleries in the same cellar; and there, in a gloom scarcely relieved by the light of their lanterns, they flung themselves upon each other with their tools, their knives, and their sabres, without waiting for any other weapons. It was indeed the war to the knife promised us by Palafox. The furious blows exchanged knocked down around the combatants many of the great stone pitchers used by the Spanish for storing wine and oil, and those who were struck down by pick or matlock were drowned in a mixed flood of wine, oil, and blood. In this subterranean struggle, which left us victors, we only lost two miners.

Another day one of our miners had just made the opening for getting into a cellar to which he had mined his way, and where the silence and peace of the tomb appeared to reign. Already, pistol in hand, he had pushed his head into the gloom, his lamp flinging but a few rays before him; and he was trying to make out his bearings with the aid of his compass, when some Spanish in ambush, who had been watching his proceedings, fell upon him, and killed him in the gallery at the opening he had just made. Fortunately his comrades behind him were able to make their escape in time.

The Spanish miners were able to choose their own ground, and to make their works in advance at the points we were likely to attack. They were therefore less cautious than we were, and their confidence sometimes led them to break the silence we so rigorously observed. Our precautions had the best results for us, and their imprudence lost them many men. Our miners became very skilful in hearing those of the enemy a long way off, and in accurately estimating the position of their mines. They were thus able to avoid them, and we had scarcely ever to deplore a mining catastrophe.

One evening, for instance, near St. Francis and about fifteen feet below the surface of the ground, nine Spaniards, thinking themselves in perfect security, went down into a cellar to prepare a chamber in the path of a gallery we had been excavating, and which was all ready for charging. The noise they made put us on our guard soon enough for us to prepare a similar trap for them; the powder was hastily laid, and our explosion brought the house down upon them, without damaging the cellar in which they were. The unfortunate fellows remained shut up for some hours without daring to make the slightest noise. But at last, when we thought they had all been dead some time, we heard them struggling to free themselves from their terrible position and calling out piteously for help. We all hastened to aid them to climb out of their tomb. They worked from their side and we from ours, and we were already near enough to give them our hands, when the roof of the cellar, shaken by the crash of the explosion, and also, perhaps, deprived of its supports by our efforts to help, fell upon them. Only three were left alive, one of whom was an officer, whom we rescued with the greatest difficulty from under the stones beneath which he was buried.

Whilst we were trying to save the Spaniards, the men in the neighbouring house, never suspecting that we were engaged in a service of rescue, rolled shells and lighted grenades upon us; but for all that, Providence allowed us to accomplish our work of benevolence without shedding the blood of a single member of our party. Our three prisoners were taken to the Duke of Abrantes, and he received them kindly, ordering a good meal to be set before them. From them we learnt to what a deplorable condition the inhabitants of Saragossa were reduced. Although there were so few of us, the blockade was so complete that no news could reach the town. Even the cleverest messengers, who tried to get in under cover of the darkness by roundabout ways, were sure to fall into the hands of our sentries, who were always on the alert to arrest them. Fresh meat and vegetables were altogether exhausted, and there was nothing to eat but fish and salt meat. A chicken was already worth five piastres (about a pound). All the mills on the Ebro were in our hands, and the besieged had no means of grinding the corn of which they still had considerable quantities. True, they had made a few hand mills, but they were altogether inadequate, and the people had to be content with grain merely crushed or bruised. This unwholesome diet did almost as much harm as actual famine would have done, and to these evils was added the terror inspired by the bombardment, which had already lasted three weeks.

Most of the inhabitants had taken refuge in cellars, thinking to be safe there, but in many cases the roofs had been staved in by the fall of bombs. Moreover the air of these damp retreats, far too small for the numbers which crowded into them, was foetid and vitiated in the extreme, so that there was really more danger in breathing it than in sharing in the defence in the open. Already all these evils combined had caused an epidemic, which claimed some 300 victims per day, and had even attacked some members of the garrison. Many were no longer strong enough to remove their dead from their houses, and those corpses which were carried into the streets or to the doors of the churches remained there without burial. Often bombs would burst and shatter the dead to pieces, tearing them from their tattered blood-stained shrouds, so that at every turn the most horrible sights met the eye.

Our prisoners also told us that the irritation of the people under such an accumulation of woes led them to be guilty of many an unjust act. Only the evening before, they said, when beds were sorely needed for the numerous wounded and dying, a bomb had fallen upon the building containing the military stores, and set fire to it. The people who hastened to put out the flames found some thirty unused beds, which had been left, forgotten and covered with dust, in a granary. They at once shouted ‘Treason!’ murdered the keeper of the stores, and then hanged him from one of the gallows on the Corso with this inscription: ‘Assassin of the human race, who stole ten thousand beds!’

Many women, even more eager in the defence than the men, carried their warlike zeal to extravagance. No conjugal or maternal affection checked their ardour, and they were seen in the midst of the greatest dangers, urging on their husbands and sons, who fell beside them or expired in their arms. The fearless heroism of the Countess Burida was, however, equalled by the generosity of her character. Her hands, too weak to wield a sword, were ever ready to distribute aid to the sufferers, and from her private purse she aided many of the brave fellows whose own resources were exhausted.

On the other hand, the members of the Junta, such as Fathers Bazile and Consolation, Mossen Sas, and Butron, were all possessed with a spirit of the most pitiless cruelty, and few days passed without their hanging some of those whom they accused of weakness or a desire to capitulate.

Palafox, who was as humane as he was courageous, loathed this system of terror, but he was compelled to yield to the will of these bloodthirsty monks. Prince Pignatelli Fuentes, who was related to Palafox, and also a friend to the French, had received just before the siege the perilous mission of going to persuade the Aragonese to accept Joseph Napoleon as their King. The people wanted to strangle the unwelcome messenger, and Palafox saved his life by feigning severity and detaining him a prisoner in his palace. He did much the same now with some French prisoners in his hands, on whom he lavished in secret as much kindness as he had himself received in France. This generous conduct was very much misunderstood in the town, and there was already a party of ferocious fellows who accused him of weakness, and even suggested treason. His health was beginning to give way under the physical and mental strain. For some time now he had rarely left the cellar in which he had taken refuge from the shells, and whenever he showed himself above ground he was greeted with passionate vociferations from the people, who swore that they would perish rather than submit to a foreign yoke, and the resolution he appears to have formed to put an end to the protracted sufferings of his fellow citizens was again shaken. Had he not already done more for the honour of the country than even the most rigorously interpreted laws of war demanded?

The enemy had tried in vain to retake the Trinitarian Convent. Their last sortie on the 31st, which, as we have seen, was the most vigorous of any, had been as unsuccessful as the rest, and from that date Palafox had given up the attempt. Rogniat was therefore free to call off the engineer officers posted at that point to go with us to the attack on the Convent of St. Francis, which would test our powers to the uttermost.

General Lacoste had intended the attacks on the northern suburb (on the left bank) and those on the town itself to coincide, so as to press the besieged on every side at once, and to intercept their communication by way of the bridge as soon as possible; above all, he was anxious to assault it by a reverse fire all along the edge of the river, hoping thus to harass the besieged so much that they would be compelled to surrender before long. With this end in view most extensive works had been completed under Dode, a colonel of engineers, including the digging of deep trenches with the establishment of many batteries round the Capuchin Convent, and the firing was just about to begin when an unexpected accident delayed the attack. The Gallego, swollen by the rain in a storm which had broken in the mountains, had so increased the volume of water with which we had covered part of the outskirts of the suburb, that the embankment broke, and some half of our works were inundated. We had to construct a batardeau,¹ repair the damage done, and dig fresh trenches.

¹ A batardeau is a wall built across a ditch with a sluice gate for regulating the height of the water.–Trans.

We had not fired a gun in that direction for some eight days, and the monks came to their windows to look down on us at our work without showing a sign of fear in expression or attitude. We saw them climbing to the top stories of their convent and following every action of ours with inquisitive gaze, chanting places and chatting together just as if we were at peace. They could look straight into our trenches, and to defilade ourselves from them we had to make our ditches deeper and more winding than we need otherwise have done. But for this precaution, good marksmen stationed on the roofs and belfries of the neighbouring buildings could have aimed their wall-pieces at us, and would seldom have missed their mark. The poor monks were, however, very soon to lose their sense of security, for their buildings were totally undefended; not a single earthwork protected this isolated fort, well provided though it was with artillery. The besieged, therefore, when they saw the gabions, fascines, sandbags, and ladders arrive all ready for an immediate attack, suddenly passed from confidence to terror, and hastened to make preparations for defence. They demolished the enclosure wall of the convent, which masked our movements, and began to dig a deep ditch behind where it had been all round the building.

At eight o’clock in the morning of the 8th, twenty-two pieces of cannon opened fire on the convent, bringing down several pieces of the walls in the course of a few hours. The Marshal, eager to learn the results of our cannonade, started with Rogniat and me about noon to the left bank of the river. When he saw how things were going, he ordered the convent to be carried by assault in his presence then and there. Two hundred grenadiers and three hundred light infantry at once flung themselves in several columns from the trenches and dashed into the convent before the monks had been able to get away. Four hundred Spaniards, unnerved by the vigorous cannonade, were unable to defend the building, and ran away at our approach. We took the convent, several guns, a flag, and a few prisoners. One battery, however, stationed by the besieged on the bank of the Ebro, took us in the rear and poured out grape shot upon us. Captain Tissot, of the French infantry, however, did not hesitate to lead his brave fellows up to the enemy’s guns and take possession of the battery, but his generous effort had been made independently of his chiefs, and he found himself unsupported. Meanwhile the enemy’s gunboats and five or six of their batteries on the right bank of the Ebro opened fire on the little group of Frenchmen, overwhelming them with grape shot. They were all killed or wounded, and Tissot himself was struck down dead just as he had got back to our trenches.

Immediately after the assault of the convent, Colonel Dode constructed communications and epaulments to right and left, to strengthen and cover our troops. He also had loopholes formed in all the walls facing Saragossa. The convent, which was some little distance from the town, had not been disturbed by the bombardment, and the besieged had used it as a hospital. We found all the cells and the church encumbered with the dying. More than 200 dead, still in their clothes, had been piled up in the centre of the convent court, and we thought that they had been brought thither to be burnt. We hastened to set fire to them. The number of the dead of both sexes and all ages, emaciated with fasting, confirmed what our prisoners had told us of the violence of the epidemic and the straits of the besieged.

Though this convent belonged to a Mendicant order, it was very rich in pictures, sculpture, and gilding, but everything had been broken or injured by the cannonade. Darkness soon overtook us, and our only light was the sinister and flickering glow from the fires slowly consuming the bodies of the victims of the epidemic. Groping along and stumbling about amongst the sick, the dead., and the piled-up débris, we made our way through the passages and rooms of the vast building, and presently came to a large library. Its contents were quickly turned to account, as those of others had already been, to dissipate the obscurity, and it was by the light of precious manuscripts that one of our sappers picked up a gold crucifix weighing more than a pound. We made torches of other manuscripts to light us in our exploration of the network of subterranean passages and rooms beneath the convent, and we penetrated into a very remarkable mortuary chamber at a considerable depth, with a roof consisting of one large vault, which appeared even more extensive than it was by the feeble light of our flambeaux. The four walls were pierced with a number of horizontal niches rather like long ovens, arranged in rows one above the other on the models of the catacombs in which the freed men of the Romans were buried near their former masters. The embalmed or otherwise prepared corpses of the monks were introduced feet foremost without coffins, but wrapped in the robes of their order and in winding sheets, after which the orifices were carefully closed and the name of each defunct engraved at the entrance to the cell occupied by him. We gazed silently at the bodies of the monks who had died or been killed during the siege, when there was no time to bury them, and the sad sight made a deep and mournful impression upon us. N o one spoke, and each seemed to be thinking, ‘Why do we thus trouble the peace of the tomb? Tomorrow, perhaps, we shall all be in like case. . . . Let us rather go and explore the ruins of the convent.’

Immediately afterwards Colonel Dode proceeded to establish a third parallel, which had a strong battery planted upon the Ebro, in order to cannonade the town quay, and support our attack from the right bank.

Meanwhile Haxo, on that right bank, seeing himself supported by the works of Colonel Dode on the left, pushed on his attack towards the quay, taking with him his engineer officers and sappers, with a view to cutting off the enemy’s communication with the bridge. He worked his way, according to circumstances, by means of sap, demolition, or mining, and had already blown up several blocks of houses in succession. The Spanish defended them with a tenacity which seemed greater every day, and before they deserted them never neglected to smear them over with tar, so as to make it more difficult for us to put out the conflagrations. One day a peasant actually had the temerity to run without cover right up to our outposts and fling some lighted grenades amongst us, a piece of bravado which cost him his life.

In the attack on the centre, the houses adjoining the general hospital had been the scene for several days of a savage conflict. Twice our miners had blown up, with fourneaux charged with some 800 pounds of powder, different portions of a big hotel or private house overlooking the Corso and opposite the Calle del Refugio, and twice our assaults had been repulsed. At last a third attack left the French masters of the burning ruins; but a perfect hail of grape shot, bursting bombs, grenades, and shells made it almost impossible for them to judge of their bearings or to take any measures to defend themselves from being killed, or having to draw back yet again. In all the ruined houses we dashed at once into every story, but our progress was contested step by step with equal fury from cellar to roof, and nothing but the death of the leader on the other side secured us the victory.

Whilst this awful conflict was raging above ground, Breuille had managed to pierce a subterranean gallery from the cellars of the general hospital to the base of the foundations of St. Francis. He was just going to penetrate beneath the belfry with his mines, so that that great building might crush the church and convent beneath it in its fall, when he heard sounds which betrayed to him that the enemy’s sappers were close upon him with their countermines, which had indeed already extended several feet beyond his own. The danger was imminent, and there was not an instant to lose. He sent to warn Rogniat at once, and immediately charged his fourneau with 3,000 pounds of powder. The troops who hurried up were ordered to make an end of the struggle with the frantic defenders, and a vigorous simultaneous attack was immediately made upon the same point so as to draw as many of the enemy as possible into the sphere of activity of the volcano which was to bring about their destruction.

The brave Colonel Duperoux with his regiment, and Valezé, a lieutenant-colonel of engineers, with his sappers, placed themselves in ambush in the ruins of the hospital to await the signal. At three o’clock in the afternoon, the time agreed on, Breuille had the charge fired, and the terrible explosion flung to a great height in the air a huge portion of the convent and the cloister, but the belfry, which every one expected to see go over, remained erect. Hardly had the mass of falling débris reached the deep funnel or crater which the explosion had opened, before the Colonel and Valezé at the head of their men flung themselves into the convent and charged the retreating enemy with the bayonet, taking possession of the entire building. The attack was so vigorous that Palafox, imagining at first that we were about to penetrate yet farther into the town, called the whole garrison to arms, and placed the cavalry in order of battle on the Corso and the new market-place, where they waited ready to cut us down. We had hoped that the Spanish would have been intimidated by the magnitude of the disaster, for the explosion had shaken the whole quarter of the town for a considerable distance, but our sudden attack only increased their fury. They contested every inch of the ground, and there was not room to take aim in the desperate struggle. We had to pursue them to the very roofs, where the fighting went on, and those of us who were below saw many fling themselves from the top of walls some eighty feet from the ground rather than yield to their conquerors, who stretched out their hands to try and save them.

The Comte de Fleuri, a French émigré, who had led a little troop of peasants along the roofs, penetrated with them into the top of the belfry. In a very few minutes they pierced a number of holes in the roof of the church, through which they poured such a hot fire upon us and so many shells and grenades that on the evening of the 10th we were obliged to abandon the building, but we returned to it the next day, and Fleuri and his men were finally flung from the top of the belfry after selling their lives very dearly.

With a view to being in readiness to direct the arduous attack of February 10, Prost and I stationed ourselves under cover, close to our troops, in a vaulted gateway in the wall of the hospital. We were, however, in great danger, in the restricted quarters we had chosen, of perishing beneath the falling walls, woodwork, and stones which were showered down upon us. We had not meant to do more than get near enough to watch the awful struggle which we knew to be about to take place, but our eagerness for the success of our enterprise, with our wish to see the effect which would be produced by our attack, was greater than our fear of being crushed to death. Before everything had fallen, therefore, we advanced far enough to be eyewitnesses of the extraordinary and awful catastrophe which occurred. Never, in any war, was there perhaps a more terrible scene than that presented by the ruins of the Convent of St. Francis during and after the assault. Not only did the violent explosion destroy half the building, including even the subterranean cellars in which many families had taken refuge and thought themselves safe, but in it perished more than 400 workmen who were aiding in the defence, with a whole corps of grenadiers belonging to the Valencia Regiment. The Fuentes gardens, the surrounding suburbs, even to the very roofs of the houses, were rendered horrible by the quantities of mutilated human remains with which they were strewn. Not a step could be taken without stumbling over torn limbs, often still palpitating, hands or fragments of arms torn from the bodies to which they had belonged, revealing to us how fearful and widespread had been the catastrophe.

One of the grenadiers who had pursued the Spaniards to the very roof of the church, the wide gutters of which we were searching for hidden or wounded enemies, whom we were now anxious to help, called our attention to two terrible things amongst the ruins, which at any other time would have made us draw back in horror. ‘Look,’ he said indignantly, at those hands torn from the arms of the fanatic Spaniards; they are quite blackened with the powder they fired at us!’ and as he pushed them aside with his foot to avoid treading on them, he bent down to raise a mass of remarkably thick and glossy hair. He was examining it curiously, thinking it was a wig which had belonged to some woman, but as he took it up he suddenly dropped it again with an exclamation of horror, for the beautiful ebony masses were still attached to the remains of the head of a young girl with ghastly mutilated features. The grenadier was no less affected than we were by this melancholy sight, and presently exclaimed in an excited voice, ‘Look at that stream of blood! Look at the lamentable results of obstinacy and rage!’ We looked and saw the blood of a number of Aragonese flowing beneath our feet into the gutters of the roofs, whence it poured through the prominent Gothic gargoyles, representing dragons, vultures, and winged monsters. For some eight centuries nothing but rain water had flowed from these gutters and spouts; but now, by a horrible contrast, they vomited forth upon the assailants below torrents of human gore.

The explosion had made a wide opening in one wall near the chief entrance, and torn up all the pavement of the nave and cloisters. In this upheaval everything had been turned topsy-turvy. The cornice of the nave, the pulpit, the altars of the side chapels, had all been flung down and were partly buried, whilst the bodies of the dead, which had been shut up in the crypts for centuries, had been wrenched from their resting-places and flung upon the surface of the ground. Then we entered the breach the Spanish were already returning to the church through the sacristy. They barricaded themselves in the midst of the ruins, behind benches, chairs, and overturned confessionals. Even reliquaries and fragments of the exhumed coffins from the crypts were pressed into the service to make a cover from behind which to fire at us. A shower of balls fell on us from every side, the most murderous coming from the galleries above us, especially through some small openings in one of the big pillars beside the choir, in which were the steps leading up to the belfry. Fortunately the breach in the wall of the church was a very wide one, and our column entered easily through it, quickly invading the whole building. The defenders were driven from their entrenchments and from the lateral chapels by a tremendous bayonet charge, and pursued by our men up the narrow and dangerous spiral staircase in the big pillar even to the roof, great numbers of them falling beneath our blows.

The struggle in the beautiful but sombre Gothic building was a truly remarkable sight. Through the broken stained-glass windows, with their subdued colouring, a ray of light shot here and there, touching with a celestial glory some group of furious combatants, or the clouds of bluish smoke from the burning powder which was almost suffocating us. Rising up from amidst the gloom and clearly outlined against the east window, was the high altar of brown marble, approached by eight steps and surmounted by a splendid canopy, originally upheld by eight Corinthian columns, and adorned with numerous angels wearing crowns on their heads. Several of the columns had been broken in the explosion, and some were now standing, whilst others lay on the ground, producing an irregularity of effect which might have been taken for the result of a happy inspiration on the part of their artist. In the nave, which was some 150 or 160 yards long, all was wrapt in gloom from the choir to the breach near the great doorway, and it was here, amidst coffins, bones, and broken marbles, that the hottest struggle took place.

From one of the old broken coffins protruded the livid shrivelled features and part of the body of a bishop still wrapped in his sacerdotal robes. His dried and bony arms seemed to be pointing at us; his dark eyes set in their deep sockets, and his mouth with its terrible expression, combined to give him the appearance of some such phantom as that of Samuel called from the grave by Saul, and we seemed to hear him cry, ‘Saul! Saul! why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?’ The terrible confusion, the carnage going on amongst the bones of the long since dead, with the mitred spectre swaying to and fro beneath our feet, combined to make up a picture which to our astonished eyes appeared the very acme of desolation.

A little later, when I went down after the enemy had been driven from every part of the church, the effects of light were still admirable, but the scene had completely changed. Here the exhumed remains of monks and prelates, given up to the tender mercies of the soldiers, were being stripped of the rich vestments in which many of them were still wrapped; there a group of weary, saddened, and exhausted combatants, worn out with the perpetual fighting, were eagerly seeking consolation in long draughts of the choice wine left behind by the unlucky Recollet friars, and presently, when the goatskin bottles in which the precious liquid had been stored were empty, they blew them out, and fell to playing at ball with them like a parcel of children. There, too, were many of our brave army doctors caring with equal solicitude for Spanish and French, and it was impossible not to admire the calm courage with which they faced all manner of dangers to come to our help. Unfortunately, however, their efforts were unavailing to restore two engineer officers of great merit, Captains Vierveaux and Jencesse, whom we lost on that terrible day in the attacks of the centre and the right.

We took possession of the two chapels and of the houses adjoining the Convent of St. Francis which skirted the Corso, here some hundred feet wide; and to harass with our fire as much as possible every one who passed along that important thoroughfare, we placed good marksmen in the belfry, in the very positions where the Spanish had but recently met death rather than yield. From the top of the tower we looked down upon streets full of barricades and traverses prepared for the further struggle, and also of gibbets laden with victims. All these menacing preparations and ominous-looking objects showed us that the leaders of the people were in anything but a pacific mood. For all that, however, the melancholy way in which the inhabitants crept along in the streets and squares strewn with the dead, seemed to suggest that discouragement was at last setting in, and that it had been with the fury of despair that the Spanish had fought during the preceding day and night. The town was now but a hemmed-in cemetery. The dead everywhere encumbered the ground, and the besieged no longer had the strength to bury or even to remove them. There was really no longer any room left for interment, and the indifference of the passers-by had become such that they would push a body out of their way with the foot as coolly as they would a stone or any other obstacle. Judging from the brisk way in which they moved about amongst the crowds, the women and the monks were the only people who retained their original zeal.

One day we had just gone down into a cellar where some of our Poles were on watch, when they saw through the grating a Spaniard picking up the lead of some exploded balls in a little garden. They fired at and killed him. He had scarcely fallen when his wife, weeping and pouring forth imprecations upon his murderers in a despairing voice, flung herself upon the body. Our soldiers, whose feelings of humanity had kept them motionless in face of the broken-hearted widow, would have generously respected her grief had she not, muttering curses on us the while, torn off her husband’s cloak, cartridge case and musket, to take them away with her. This was too much; a bullet at once stretched her lifeless across the dead she wished to avenge. A few minutes later a young girl of about fifteen or sixteen years old rushed into the garden, uttering heartrending cries of ‘Mi padre! mi padre! Alma de mi madre!’ She seemed to be in the grasp of the most agonised grief, and tore her hair as she convulsively embraced the dead bodies, trying to recall them to life, and entreating us to kill her too and put an end to her sufferings. Not one of our men was cruel enough to shed the blood of the orphan on the bodies of her parents, but she in her turn had the temerity to provoke us. After several fruitless efforts to carry away her mother’s body, she wrapped it in her father’s cloak and tried to drag it along with the cartridge box and musket which had cost that mother so dear, urged to this action as much by the imperative necessity of vengeance as by her filial piety. We could not blame the poor child for her hatred of the murderers of her parents, and we heard our Poles call out to her, first in their own Sarmatian language and then in Spanish, ‘Malenka nie cekay sien! Chiquita, no ten miedo!’ (Don't be afraid, little one.) Few days passed without something of this kind occurring.

In spite of the great fatigue of our troops, there was less suffering in our camp than in the town. The sky was clear and the sun bright and warm in Spain that year, and though it was as yet only February we enjoyed the mild temperature and all the other delights of an early spring. Strawberries were already red and ripe, laurels, rose and fruit trees were in flower, the air was full of the scent of lavender, rosemary, violets, and narcissi, invigorating our men and saving them from epidemics.

To shield themselves from the freshness of the temperature at night, the soldiers had carried off to the camp all the pictures they could from the churches and convents, and the painted varnished canvases proved a first-rate protection alike from the sun, the rain, the cold, and the damp. In default of straw they used the parchments of old manuscripts to make their beds, which, if not less hard, were much drier than the bare ground. Under any other circumstances one would have said, ‘Better suffer than destroy;’ but now it was a case of life or death, and the largest books were used to sleep on, the decorations of altars, the statues of saints, and the gilded carvings in wood to make camp fires, whilst pictures from the church served to cover in huts.

A visit to the camp was quite a treat to us, and the exhibition there was really not unlike that once held in the Place Dauphine, opposite the Palais de Justice, in Paris, in 1792, when young artists had not yet been admitted to the honour of showing their pictures in the Louvre. The Poles, who are Catholics and generally very pious, were particularly pleased with the sacred pictures. Little accustomed in their own land to find anything equal in merit to the canvases from the sacred buildings of Spain, they were found eagerly gazing at the subjects taken from the Bible or the lives of the martyrs. Generally quiet and self-possessed enough, their imagination was kindled by the sight of these sublime conceptions, and they were inspired by the contemplation of the generous devotion of the martyrs and the palms of victory bestowed on them by Heaven. The desire to imitate their noble example gave them strength to persevere in their arduous tasks, and the hope of an eternal recompense sustained them as nothing else could have done in all they had to go through. Their bearing, full as it was of resignation, showed us that their powers of endurance were very far from being exhausted as yet. The French, on the other hand, who were by nature more high-spirited and volatile, stood privations and fatigue with far less patience.

One day the Marshal was passing near a group of soldiers looking at a picture, and to his surprise overheard these words: ‘The draught of water the good Lord is going to let the old fellow drink is rather like the booty our Marshal has promised us!’ The Marshal went up to the men, and saw that they were admiring a picture by Murillo representing Jesus bidding Peter come to Him on the water. ‘Well, my friends,’ said the Marshal, ‘God is speaking to St. Peter here very much as I do to you. God says to Peter, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” That is to say, “If thou hadst had faith in my words, thou wouldst not have sunk;” which means for you, if you have confidence in me, hope will sustain your courage, and perseverance will overcome all obstacles. Yes, my friends, in a few days, you to whom I speak will take Saragossa!’ The soldiers all listened quietly, and their faces, on which no smile had been seen for days, brightened up with one accord, whilst the cheers with which they escorted the Marshal when he ceased speaking showed what faith they placed in his promises.

The Marshal was not wrong in his prophecies. The besieged were reduced to a state of the greatest misery, and the cruel measures of repression of the Junta could do no more. For a time they had been able to rule by terror, but now every one with any sense, such as merchants, shopkeepers, and rich men with anything left to lose, seeing that it was no good to hope for the long-expected succour, were anxious to capitulate. Others, weakened by famine, fatigue, and anxiety, had had nothing to save them from starvation but a few ears of corn, which they could not even grind, whilst some were so maddened and brutalised by their fury that they were no longer capable of reasonable action. They blindly followed the orders of the monk-ridden Junta, whose greatest fear was that the French, so soon as they were masters of Saragossa, would suppress the convents of Spain, as they had already done those of France.

Some hundred wretched peasants, men, women, and children, deserted one morning en masse in the direction of the Castillo del Algaferia, and entreated our outposts, who tried to drive them back, to kill them rather than compel them to return to the town. The captain of the guard, too generous to do anything so cruel, took them to the Marshal, who received them with an air of severity, reproaching them in a stern voice for having shed so much French blood by their determined obstinacy. ‘You ask to be allowed to return to your homes,’ he said; ‘you deserve nothing of the sort.’ He then ordered guards to surround the poor wretches, who thought they were to be led to execution, and added, ‘Here, take them away, give them something to eat and drink, and when they have recovered a little give each of them two francs and a couple of loaves and take them back to Saragossa. I wish the people in the town to know that we have plenty of provisions, and what they may expect from my generosity.’ Henri IV., whose position and noble nature alike compelled him to try and win the hearts of his people, treated them with no greater magnanimity at the gates of Paris than did the Duke of Montebello these strangers of an alien race outside Saragossa.

The Swiss troops in the town, who had hitherto fought with unabated courage, were now no longer proof against the terrible tests to which their fidelity was subjected; they began to desert at intervals, and on February 14 a complete company of some fifty Swiss guards, headed by their officers and bringing their arms and baggage, joined our ranks on the rampart near the Capuchin Convent of Jesus.

On the way from the portion of the town occupied by us to the camp, we had to pass a great many sentinels and vedettes stationed amongst the masses of melancholy-looking ruins, encumbered with the dead bodies of the Spanish and all manner of rubbish. These sentinels kept careful watch on the inhabitants of the still unconquered districts, and reported at once everything that occurred amongst the besieged. The Poles of the three regiments from the Vistula acquired incredible skill in this service. They would at once notice every little opening made by the enemy in the walls, even if it were no bigger than a penny piece, and would point it out to any of us who happened to approach it, warning us to be on our guard. These warnings were generally given by signs, as very few of us understood Polish, and they were not only very valuable but also often quite comic on account of the quaint pantomime with which our eagerly benevolent friends enforced them. Looking at us with eyes full of meaning, they would point to the dangerous little hole or hidden loop-hole with one hand, whilst they placed a finger of the other on their lips to enjoin silence; any one who neglected to obey these expressive signals was sure to be immediately shot down, for the apparently insignificant little holes were so close to us that every bullet from them found its billet. Equally well guarded against surprise were the many galleries we had had to pierce in all the different houses belonging to the block. We often had to pass from one block to another by way of narrow streets, where we had not thought it necessary to make traverses. In such cases we made breaches or openings opposite to each other, and the officer when he went on his rounds had to jump from one side to the other of the street; and if he was not quite agile enough to achieve the crossing in a single bound, well-aimed shots would be sure to bring him down dead midway. We lost many officers in this way, but the skill and unwearied watchfulness of our Poles saved the lives of a good many Frenchmen, who were too much disposed to despise the caution which they thought detracted from their courage. I myself twice owed my life to our Poles, and I am very certain that but for them our loss would have been very much greater.

The victims of the epidemic were now so numerous that we found their bodies abandoned, in the clothes they had worn when alive, in every street and house of which we took possession. Happily for us the air was still so sharp and cold that the corpses dried quickly, and there was nothing repulsive in their appearance, nor was there any bad smell from them. They were very light and easy to lift too, and looked like pasteboard figures covered with dust. I can still see one room in the second story of a house which had been broken into and partially destroyed from the bottom to the top. An explosion had surprised a father and daughter just as they were taking their siesta after their meal by a little round table, on which a few drinking vessels still remained. The old man, who was pretty well dressed and partly wrapped in his cloak, was seated in a big black wooden armchair, and his daughter, also completely dressed, was stretched on a rush mat at his feet. There was nothing in their features to betray what they had suffered, and during the few minutes I spent near the motionless group I really wondered whether the bodies were real or made of wax.

So far the hopes Palafox had founded on the rainy season which was to inundate us, and compel us to abandon our trenches, had not been realised, but our army was dwindling day by day through the continual fighting and from illness. We no longer had troops enough to make our attacks at the most favourable moment, and Roginat was obliged to abandon all idea of gaining more ground towards the left of St. Francis. If Palafox had now been able to realise all the advantages he might have gained by flinging himself with a strong force of his men, say a column of 20,000 determined troops, on to one or the other bank of the river, our position would soon have become very critical, but that General was ill and in his turn suffering from the epidemic. His energy seemed to be declining with his health, and he may perhaps also have been rather afraid to risk leading men out to fight, who, though they were brave enough within walls, had failed in courage before our forces in the plains of Tudela.

Rogniat, compelled to concentrate his forces, now had all the houses near St. Francis blown up by mines, so as to prevent the enemy from approaching except by the open. He next gained a little ground on the right, and there established a blinded battery, in which was placed a howitzer, with which the Corso could be raked; a little farther still on the right a twelve-pounder was placed in another blinded battery, and this greatly harassed the besieged, enfilading as it did the whole of the Calle of San Giles, which led to the bridge in the centre of the town.

Whilst these works were being constructed, our sappers were undermining the Corso in several parts; under Prost they were advancing by six galleries, the first two of which had already reached the other side beneath the theatre and the adjoining house, whilst under Haxo two galleries were being pushed on in the direction of the University.

One day, as Marshal Lannes was going round the lines of the suburb, a Spaniard, hidden amongst the ruins, fired at him at such close quarters that the inside of his cloak was singed. Irritated at this audacity, Lannes climbed on to the ruins of the Convent of Jesus, and himself fired a dozen shots. The enemy then directed a howitzer on the gap from which the shots proceeded, and one of the shells cut in two Captain Lepot, of the engineers, who was looking over the Marshal’s shoulder.

In the town operations were rapidly proceeding; but Haxo, who had nearly reached the Puerta del Sol, found that his position was too much exposed. He could not advance farther without running the danger of having the enemy behind him in the entrenchments he was occupying, besides which our troops were now too few for extended or repeated attacks, so that there was nothing for it but to try surprises. It was of the utmost importance that the suburb on the left bank of the Ebro should be taken at once, so as to place what was called the Tanners’ Quarter between two fires.

The Marshal therefore ordered a simultaneous and general attack upon the town and suburb for the morrow, and at the same time gave instructions that epaulments should be erected during the night on the roads by which he feared the enemy might escape us.

In the attack on the town we availed ourselves of the position we already occupied, blew up a house, and opened a breach with a petard. The Poles at once flung themselves into the gap and dashed across the fire, pursuing the enemy by way of their own communications. The Spanish were compelled to abandon their circular battery and covered way on the quay, which were taken in reverse.

The next day our miners set fire to the two chambers, charged with 1,500 lbs. of powder, beneath the University, and the explosion tore open two great breaches, through which we flung two columns of troops, who took possession of the great building. The enemy were now driven to abandon the Corso.

At the same time the Marshal ordered the Gazan division to attack the suburb opposite to him. Ever since daybreak all the siege artillery had been playing upon the approaches to the bridge, with a view to intercepting communications, and all the parapets were already thrown down. The aim of our principal attack was to get possession of the convent near the San Lazaro bridge, which commanded that one connecting link between the town and its suburb.

About noon a practicable breach had been made at San Lazaro, and our fire with that of the enemy redoubled at every point. In the plains the noise of the detonations of artillery died away in the distance, but in the streets of the town the roar resounded from every wall, and the crashing of the roofs beneath the bursting bombs, the crackling of numerous fires all blazing away at once, the ringing of the tocsin from every belfry, the hissing and whistling of bullets, bombs, and grape shot, the shrill rattle of the mortars, all jumbled together in one, and supplemented by the echoes flung back from the roofs of the churches, which shook so much that the pictures on the walls were flung upon the heads of the combatants, combined to make up a military music which must have struck terror into the hearts of the besieged, though it filled our troops with delirious joy.

The enemy had nearly 7,000 defenders in the suburb, when this terrible hail of projectiles cut off their communication with the town. The discharge from our guns made openings here and there in the enclosures of the gardens, and each bullet hole was at once turned to account by the Spanish as a loophole from which to fire at us.

The walls were, however, everywhere falling before us, and the defenders presently withdrew into the Convents of San Lazaro and Santa Isabel, which we were breaching. Our cannonade had overthrown the big gate of a stable yard in the latter building, and we were just going to dash in, when some peasants on the other side lifted up the gate and held it in position by main force. Twice it was flung down, and twice replaced in the same manner, and we were obliged to knock over the pillars that supported it with our artillery, so as to destroy there with the door, before we could avail ourselves of the breach. A little later, when we did enter, we found a number of Spaniards lying crushed beneath the door, having bravely sacrificed their lives in the struggle to keep it closed.

On the first rumour of the general attack to be made, the commandant of the suburb had rushed to his post to defend his position, but he was killed in crossing the bridge. The news of his death quickly spread amongst the defenders, and threw them into some confusion, of which the Marshal, who noticed it directly, was not slow to avail himself, for he immediately ordered the attack to begin.

The sharpshooters at once debouched from the trenches and advanced in skirmishing order, so as to suffer less from the grape shot poured on them from the Spanish batteries on the right bank and the gunboats on the river. Three columns supported this movement, and an oil store was soon broken into and at once became strewn with the dead. We then pushed on through narrow passages into several houses, which were vigorously defended, and where every one was put to the sword. Into one of these houses, where our advance had been checked for an hour by the courageous resistance of the Spaniards, Captain Gallard managed to penetrate with his company by way of the roof, and climbed down through the granary, taking the defenders in the rear and putting them to flight. Every one who dared to resist was struck down. Presently, in the midst of the cries of distress of those he had overwhelmed, and surrounded by a smoke so dense that he could see nothing before him, the French captain, who imagined he was finishing off the last of his enemies, was in his turn taken by surprise. He redoubled his efforts, flung himself upon those who were entering the house from below, and fell gloriously, covered with wounds; but, alas! it was by the bayonets of Frenchmen that he was struck down, for Captain Clerget, another officer of the same regiment, had broken in the door of the house just at the same time as Captain Gallard got in at the roof, and it was not until too late that the former discovered his fatal mistake, realising that he had had the misfortune to slay a brave brother officer and many of his men.

As soon as they got a footing in the houses adjoining San Lazaro, our troops were able to penetrate into the court of that convent. They then broke into the wall of the church with the aid of a charge, the monks making a desperate defence. Behind them was a mass of men, women, and children, who, not having dared to cross the bridge, had taken refuge at the foot of the altar, and now pleaded piteously for mercy. The smoke was, however, too dense for our troops to see the victims whom they would willingly have spared, everything was sacked, and not until all were dead did the cries cease and silence once more reign in the sanctuary. Meanwhile the wide staircase, the cells, and the passages of the convent were the scene of an equally bloody and obstinate struggle. The convent was completely taken, and from every window monks and soldiers, who had aided in its defence, flung themselves into the Ebro beneath. Our fire was now immediately turned upon the entrance to the bridge, to prevent those still in the suburb from getting back to the town.

The inhabitants of the suburb were overwhelmed with consternation when they lost their chief at the very moment of the discovery that their retreat was cut off. They gave up any attempt to defend the bridge head or the houses, and wandered aimlessly about in scattered parties, trying to escape, but not knowing which way to turn, when they found every way out closed by our troops. Three hundred of them, more courageous than the rest, led by one Fernando Gonzales, dauntlessly braved our fusillade and managed to make their way back into the town by forcing a passage across the bridge in the midst of a hail of bullets from the Convent of San Lazaro. The smoke from this fusillade soon wrapped them in so dense a cloud that they were hidden from our view. Very few were wounded in the brief transit, and their chief was fortunate enough to take with him into Saragossa nearly all who had had the pluck to follow him. Some also escaped with the aid of boats, yet others swam across the river, but very many were drowned. Another party, numbering about 3,000, tried to flee up country by way of the banks of the Ebro, but General Gazan promptly sent a regiment of cavalry to bar their passage. Their position was desperate, and their strength exhausted from the privations and fatigues of the protracted siege, so they laid down their arms and were taken prisoners.

The commandant of the suburb, whose death had so discouraged the defenders as to lead to their defeat, had been the French émigré Baron de Versage, who had thus died fighting against his fellow countrymen.

Although Palafox was so ill that he was scarcely able to stand, he undertook to go to the succour of the suburb with General Philippe de Saint-Mart. Three times that general tried in vain to debouch from the bridge at the head of his troops. A few hundred men did succeed in getting over, but our batteries on the left bank swept so many on the approaches to the quay, that the main body decided that it would be impossible to cross the whole length of the bridge without cover, although the broken-down parapets had been replaced by epaulments of sand-bags and bales of wool. The rest of the Spanish troops therefore remained in the town, and were unable even to prevent us from taking the University buildings on that side.

We remained masters of the position, and were now able to bombard that part of the town which had hitherto suffered least. We had taken seventeen pieces of cannon and 3,000 prisoners, whilst nearly as many more of the defenders had fallen beneath our fire. This brilliant victory, won in the open by a small division, of which only 600 men took part in the actual conflict against determined and well-entrenched troops, did wonders to raise the spirits of the besiegers, and cost Gazan not more than fifty of his men.

During the confusion of the attack on the suburb, in the midst of a cross fusillade from every side, a nun of the Convent of Saint Elizabeth, whose great age prevented her from running away as quickly as her companions, drew all eyes upon her, as with tottering yet dignified steps she made her way across a square strewn with the dead and wounded. Her disordered robes, and her uncovered head with its thin hair, showed that she had been called to escape from danger in a time of trouble. But the noble expression of her features bore witness to the calmness of her spirit, and she passed through the clouds of white smoke and amidst the clash of arms without showing a sign of fear. She looked like some such ministering angel as appears in dreams, slowly descending from above in a celestial glory, upheld on the wings of hope, and sent from heaven to bring peace to afflicted mortals when their souls are torn by their violent emotions. In the midst of the awful struggle she seemed to be saying, ‘Almighty God, I have done no wrong; I am beneath Thy shield, and will fear no evil.’ Her sweet, benevolent old face, and the unruffled calm which radiated from her whole person in the horrible uproar going on about her, aroused the astonishment and interest of every one who saw her pass by; all dreaded every moment to see her fall, and would have liked to save her, but it could only be done at the risk of life, for to reach her it would be necessary to cross the open square exposed to the fusillade of the Aragonese. But such a grand chance of protecting the weak could not long appeal in vain to Frenchmen. An officer and several men dashed forwards without orders, seized the old woman by the hands, and, supporting her with their arms, quickly dragged her out of danger. They were trying in broken Spanish to set her mind at rest by explaining why they had treated her with such scant ceremony, when, to their great surprise, she replied with a sweet smile and in a feeble voice in excellent French, ‘Generous soldiers, I too am French, and your weapons have no terrors for me. It is fifty years since I entered this convent, and I entreat you to let me join my old companions, that I may pray and die with them.’ Touched by her noble confidence in him, the young officer overwhelmed her with attentions and had her taken to General Gazan. He too took the greatest interest in the sainted woman; she was treated with every care and respect, and a few days later she was able to resume her pious occupations. She turned out to be the sister of the celebrated actor Grandménil and to have been born at Bordeaux.

As soon as I got back to the town after the expedition to the suburb, I went to have a look at the University buildings, of which we had just taken possession. At three o’clock, when the struggle in the suburb was at its hottest, the three great mines under the University, each charged with 1,500 pounds of powder, were fired at once. Five hundred picked men, some French, others Poles, divided into two columns, flung themselves into the buildings in spite of the fire from the Puerta del Sol and the neighbouring houses. The Spanish, who were beginning to be discouraged by all their misfortunes, offered, however, but a feeble resistance. We took the University, and in our pursuit of the defenders we dashed pell-mell with them, by way of the Calle del Sepulcro, right up to the Church of the Trinity, which still remained in the hands of the besieged. Another column penetrated at nightfall, without striking a blow, into a house at a corner of the Corso, at which no less than ten previous assaults had been repulsed. At the same time Prost took possession of part of the Palacio Fuentes, which he set on fire with a view to isolating his left flank and guarding against surprise.

Officers and men were now alike excessively fatigued. The epidemic was beginning to affect us, and the hospital at Alagon was crowded with the sick and wounded. We were short of doctors, of nurses, of beds, of food, of linen, in fact, of everything, and the victory of the 18th came in the nick of time to raise the spirits of the troops, and restore all their original energy, whilst it at the same time greatly discouraged the besieged. Harassed and exhausted, shut up within their walls, and no longer able even to walk on the quay, the luckless defenders were actually within sight and earshot of the surrender of the 3,000 men who laid down their arms on the other side of the river. The news quickly spread through the town, and neither Palafox nor the Junta tried to deny it.

The struggle became more bloody as the defence grew more concentrated. The population decreased in a most alarming manner, and every day ten times as many perished from typhus as the day before. This terrible scourge especially attacked the peasants, refugees from the country, and wounded soldiers without fixed homes or relations to help them. There were no longer any regular hospital attendants; the medicines for the sick were exhausted, and rice water was all that was left to assuage their sufferings. The unfortunate invalids had nothing but a little straw on which to rest on the pavements of the long, cold, vaulted passages which form the entrances to all the houses of Saragossa. There they died of hunger or were consumed by the fever, without a hand to give them a cooling draught. The Countess Burida and the women who had devoted themselves to succouring the wounded were now either dead themselves or scarcely able to drag themselves to the side of their nearest relations. Gangrene set in rapidly on the slightest wound; the few sentinels whom the fear of being murdered, or some little remnant of courage, still kept at their posts, were struck suddenly down by fever. They were to be seen sitting shivering on the stone benches wrapped in their cloaks, their weapons dropping from hands no longer strong enough to hold them, and many actually died before they could be relieved.

Palafox himself, attacked by the epidemic, but harassed still more by the cruel demands of the monks and the harsh measures of the intriguing Junta, to which he was compelled to lend his name, found himself no longer able to bear the burdens of government, and his orders with those of the other military chiefs were already set at defiance. It was feared that Palafox and his colleagues would leave, as they had done in the previous siege, under the pretext of hastening the arrival of succour; and, to guard against this, those of the inhabitants who still rejected all idea of capitulation kept a very careful watch on the gunboats, which might facilitate an escape. Of the leading fanatics of the town, many had, however, now succumbed, and in losing their support, Bazile, chief of the Junta, also lost his own power and credit. The clergy and the populace were at last beginning to give up counting on the miraculous protection of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, when they found that she disdained to preserve her own church from destruction. The garrison thought that they had now done enough for the glory of the Spanish name, and many influential men amongst the inhabitants, finding themselves compelled to yield to necessity, now at last dared to say that the hour had come to leave off fighting. They went to Palafox, whom they found still full of energy, but too ill to retain any more hope of winning the obsidional crown.¹ He had heard, too, of our successes all over the Peninsula, but he meant to risk one more attempt, which might perhaps enable him to gain time, and to carry out certain generous intentions. He was exceedingly anxious to do something to ameliorate the terrible condition of those of the Aragonese who had survived all their awful sufferings. Too proud, however, to take a step in open daylight which would be sure not to be approved of by the general public, he waited till night to send an envoy to the French Marshal.

¹ The obsidional crown was given by the Romans to a commander who held out to the end against a siege. – Trans.

Hoping to get the best possible terms in the deplorable and