On the right, the assailants twice stormed an isolated stone house that defended the breach of Saint Augustin, and twice they were repulsed, and finally driven back with loss.
In the centre, the attacking column, regardless of two small mines that exploded at the foot of the walls, carried the breach fronting the oil manufactory, and then endeavoured to break into the town; but the Spaniards retrenched within the place, opened such a fire of grape and musquetry that the French were content to establish themselves on the summit of the breach, and to connect their lodgement with the trenches by new works.
The third column was more successful; the breach was carried, and the neighbouring houses also, as far as the first large cross street; beyond that, the assailants could not penetrate, but they were enabled to establish themselves within the walls of the town, and immediately brought forward their trenches, so as to comprehend this lodgement within their works.
The assault of the fourth column, which was directed against San Engracia, was made with such rapidity and vigour that the Polish regiment of the Vistula not only carried that convent itself, but the one adjoining to it; and the victorious troops, unchecked by the fire from the houses, and undaunted by the simultaneous explosion of six small mines planted in their path, swept the ramparts to the left as far as the bridge over the Huerba; and, at that moment, the guards of the trenches, excited by the success of their comrades, broke forth, without orders, mounted the walls, pushed along the ramparts to the left, bayonetted the artillery-men at their guns in the Capuchin convent, and, continuing their career, endeavoured some to reach the semicircular battery and the Misericordia, and others to break into the town.
This wild assault was soon checked by grape from two guns planted behind a traverse on the ramparts, and by a murderous fire from the houses. As their ranks were thinned, the ardour of the French sunk, and the courage of their adversaries increased. The former were, after a little, driven back upon the Capuchins; and the Spaniards were already breaking into that convent in pursuit, when two battalions, detached by general Morlot from the trenches of the false attack, arrived, and secured possession of that point, which was moreover untenable by the Spaniards, inasmuch as the guns of the convent of Santa Engracia saw it in reverse. The French took, on this day, more than six hundred men. But general La Coste immediately abandoned the false attack against the castle, fortified the Capuchin convent and a house situated at an angle of the wall abutting upon the bridge over the Huerba, and then joining them by works to his trenches, the ramparts of the town became the front line of the French.
The walls of Zaragoza thus went to the ground, but Zaragoza herself remained erect; and, as the broken girdle fell from the heroic city, the besiegers started at the view of her naked strength. The regular defences had, indeed, crumbled before the skill of the assailants; but the popular resistance was immediately called, with all its terrors, into action; and, as if Fortune had resolved to mark the exact moment when the ordinary calculations of science should cease, the chief engineers on both sides were simultaneously slain. The French general, La Coste, a young man, intrepid, skilful, and endowed with genius, perished like a brave soldier; but the Spanish colonel, San Genis, died not only with the honour of a soldier, but the glory of a patriot; falling in the noblest cause, his blood stained the ramparts which he had himself raised for the protection of his native place.
CHAPTER III.
The war being now carried into the streets of Zaragoza, the sound of the alarm-bell was heard over all the quarters of the city; and the people, assembling in crowds, filled the houses nearest to the lodgements made by the French. Additional traverses and barricadoes were constructed across the principal streets; mines were prepared in the more open spaces; and the communications from house to house were multiplied, until they formed a vast labyrinth, of which the intricate windings were only to be traced by the weapons and the dead bodies of the defenders. The members of the junta, become more powerful from the cessation of regular warfare, with redoubled activity and energy urged the defence, but increased the horrors of the siege by a ferocity pushed to the very verge of phrenzy. Every person, without regard to rank or age, who excited the suspicions of these furious men, or of those immediately about them, was instantly put to death; and amidst the noble bulwarks of war, a horrid Cavalhero. array of gibbets was to be seen, on which crowds of wretches were suspended each night, because their courage had sunk beneath the accumulating dangers of their situation, or because some doubtful expression or gesture of distress had been misconstrued by their barbarous chiefs.
From the heights of the walls which he had conquered, marshal Lasnes contemplated this terrific Rogniat. scene; and, judging that men so passionate, and so prepared, could not be prudently encountered in open battle, he resolved to proceed by the slow, but certain process of the mattock and the mine: and this was also in unison with the emperor’s instructions. Hence from the 29th of January to the 2d of February, the efforts of the French were directed to the enlargement of their lodgements on the walls; and they succeeded, after much severe fighting and several explosions, in working forward through the nearest houses; but, at the same time, they had to sustain many counter-assaults from the Spaniards; especially one, exceedingly fierce, made by a friar on the Capuchins’ convent of the Trinity.