At the right attack the company of the 9th, although retarded by a ravine, by a thick hedge, by the slowness of the Portuguese, and by a heavy fire, entered the abandoned redoubt with little loss; but the troops were then rashly led against the cask redoubt, contrary to orders, and were beaten back by the enemy. The loss was thus balanced. That of the French was two hundred and forty, and the companies of the 9th under Cameron, alone, had seven officers and sixty men killed or wounded. The operation, although successful, was an error; for the seven-gun battery on the right of the Urumea was not opened, wherefore the assault was precipitate or the battery was not necessary, but the loss justified the conception of the battery. When the action ceased the engineers made a lodgement in the redoubt, and commenced two batteries to rake the horn-work and the eastern rampart of the place. Two other batteries were also commenced on the right bank of the Urumea.
The 18th the besieged threw up traverses on the land front to meet the raking fire of the besiegers; and the latter dragged four pieces up the Monte Olia to plunge into the Mirador and other works on the Monte Orgullo. In the night a lodgement was made on the ruins of San Martin, the two batteries at the right attack were armed, and two additional mortars dragged up the Monte Olia.
On the 19th all these batteries were armed, and in the night the French were driven from the cask redoubt.
All the batteries opened fire the 20th, and were principally directed to form the breach.
Smith’s plan was similar to that followed by Marshal Berwick a century before. He proposed a lodgement on the horn-work before the breach should be assailed; but he had not then read the description of that siege, and unknowingly fixed the breaching-point precisely where the wall had been most strongly rebuilt after Berwick’s attack. This was a fault, yet a slight one, because the wall did not resist the batteries very long; but it was a serious matter that Graham, at the suggestion of the commander of the artillery, began his operations by breaching. Smith objected to it, Fletcher acquiesced very reluctantly, on the understanding that the ruin of the defences was only postponed, a condition afterwards unhappily forgotten.
This first attack was not satisfactory, the weather proved bad, some guns mounted on ship-carriages failed, one twenty-four-pounder was rendered unserviceable by the enemy, another by accident, a captain of engineers was killed, and the shot had little effect on the solid wall. In the night however, the ship-guns were mounted on better carriages, and a parallel across the isthmus was projected; but the greatest part of the workmen, to avoid a tempest, sought shelter in the suburb of San Martin, and when day broke only one-third of the work was performed.
On the 21st the besiegers sent a summons, the governor refused to receive the letter, the firing was renewed, and though the main wall resisted the parapets crumbled; the batteries on Monte Olia also plunged into the horn-work at sixteen hundred yards’ distance, with such effect that the besieged, having no bomb-proofs, were forced to dig trenches to protect themselves. The French fire, directed solely against the breaching batteries, was feeble, but at midnight a shell thrown from the castle into the bay gave the signal for a sally, during which French vessels with supplies entered the harbour. The besieged now isolated the breach by cuts in the rampart and other defences, yet the besiegers’ parallel across the isthmus was completed, and in its progress laid bare the mouth of a drain four feet high and three feet wide, containing the pipe of the aqueduct cut off by the Spaniards. Through that dangerous opening Lieutenant Reid,[30] a young and zealous engineer, crept even to the counterscarp of the horn-work, where he found the passage closed and returned. Thirty barrels of powder were placed in this drain, and eight feet was stopped with sand-bags, forming a globe of compression to blow, as through a tube, so much rubbish over the counterscarp as might fill the narrow ditch of the horn-work.
On the 22nd the fire from the batteries, unexampled from its rapidity and accuracy, opened what appeared a practicable breach in the eastern flank wall, between two towers called Los Hornos and Las Mesquitas; but the descent into the town behind this breach was more than twelve feet perpendicular, and the garrison were seen from Monte Olia diligently working at the interior defences to receive the assault: they added also another gun to the battery of St. Elmo, just under the Mirador battery, to flank the front attack. On the other hand the besiegers had placed four sixty-eight pound carronades in battery to play on the defences of the breach, yet the fire was slack because the guns were now greatly enlarged at the vents.
On the 23rd, the sea blockade being null, the French vessels carried off the badly-wounded men. This day also the besiegers, judging the breach between the towers practicable, turned the guns, at the suggestion of General Oswald, to break the wall on the right of the main breach. Smith opposed this, urging, that no advantage would be gained by making a second opening, to get at which the troops must first pass the great breach; time would be thus lost, and there was a manifest objection on account of the tide and depth of water at the new point attacked. His counsel was overruled, and in the course of the day, the wall being thin, the stroke heavy and quick, a second breach thirty feet wide was rendered practicable.
The ten-inch mortars and sixty-eight-pound carronades were now turned upon the great breach, and a stockade, the latter separating the high curtain from the flank against which the attack was conducted. Under this fire the houses near the breach were soon in flames, which destroyed several defences and menaced the whole town with destruction, wherefore the assault was ordered for next morning: when the troops assembled the flames were still so fierce the attack was deferred, and the batteries again opened.