The garrison, including six hundred Spanish infantry and one hundred horse of that nation, amounted to two thousand five hundred men, and was posted in the following manner. Seven hundred were in the island, one hundred in the Catalina, two hundred in the convent, and fifteen hundred in the town.
On the 19th of December the enemy having driven in the advanced posts, were encountered with a sharp skirmish, and designedly led towards the eastern front.
The 20th the place was invested, but on the 21st a picquet of French troops having incautiously advanced towards the western front, captain Wren of the eleventh suddenly descended from the Catalina and carried them off. In the night the enemy approached close to the walls, but the next morning captain Wren again came down from the Catalina, and, at the same time, the troops sallied from the convent, with a view to discover the position of the French advanced posts. So daring was this sally that Mr. Welstead of the eighty-second actually pushed into one of their camps and captured a field-piece there; and although he was unable to bring it off, in face of the French reserves, the latter were drawn by the skirmish under the fire of the ships, of the island, and of the town, whereby they suffered severely and could with difficulty recover the captured piece of artillery from under the guns of the north-east tower.
In the night of the 22d the anticipations of the British engineer were realized. The enemy broke ground in two places, five hundred yards from the eastern front, and assiduously pushed forward their approaches until the 26th; but always under a destructive fire, to which they replied with musketry, and with their wall-pieces, which killed several men, and would have been very dangerous, but for the sand-bags which captain Nicholas, the chief engineer at Cadiz, had copiously supplied. This advantage was however counterbalanced by the absence of the ships which were all driven away in a gale on the 23rd.
On the 27th the French battering-train arrived, and on the 29th the sixteen-pounders opened against the town, and the howitzers against the island. These last did little damage beyond dismounting the gun in the tower of the Gusmans, which was however quickly re-established; but the sixteen-pounders brought the old wall down in such flakes, that in a few hours a wide breach was effected, a little to the left of the portcullis tower, looking from the camp.
The place was now exposed both to assault and escalade, but behind the breach the depth to the street was above fourteen feet, the space below was covered with iron window-gratings, having every second bar turned up, the houses there, and behind all points liable to escalade, were completely prepared and garrisoned, and the troops were dispersed all round the ramparts, each regiment having its own quarter assigned. The Spanish and forty-seventh British regiment guarded the breach, and on their right some riflemen prolonged the line. The eighty-seventh regiment occupied the portcullis tower and extended along the rampart to the left.
In the night of the 29th the enemy fired salvos of grape on the breach, but the besieged cleared the foot of it between the discharges.
The 30th the breaching fire was renewed, the wall was broken for sixty feet, and the whole breach offered an easy ascent, yet the besieged again cleared away the rubbish, and in the night were fast augmenting the defences behind, when a heavy rain filled the bed of the river, and the torrent bringing down, from the French camp, planks, fascines, gabions, and dead bodies, broke the palisades with a shock, bent the portcullis backward, and with the surge of the waters even injured the defences behind the breach: a new passage was thus opened in the wall, yet such was the vigour of the besieged, that the damage was repaired before the morning, and the troops calmly and confidently awaited