The advanced guard, with Lieutenant Jones, who led them, were made prisoners on the breach; of the other engineers, Captain Lewis was severely wounded, and Lieutenant Machell was killed. Lieutenant-Colonel Sir R. Fletcher was wounded at the same time in the trenches.
This assault does not appear to have failed from want of exertion, but from the fire of the place being left entire, and from the great distance at which the covered approaches were from the breach; the troops were stated in the Gazette to have done their duty, but that it was beyond the power of gallantry to overcome the difficulties opposed to them.
On this failure being reported to Lord Wellington, he came over from Lesaca, and decided upon renewing the same mode of attack, but on a much more extended scale, as soon as sufficient guns and ammunition should arrive from England; the augmentation to the attack was to extend the breach on the left to the salient angle of the demi-bastion of the main front, and from batteries to be established on the left of the attack, to continue it round the whole of its face, and to the end of the high curtain above it.
On the 27th of July, at seven A.M., the enemy made a sortie, to feel the guard of the trenches; they surprised it, and entering the parallel at the left, swept it to the right, carrying into the place two hundred prisoners. In consequence of this loss, the guard was concentrated in a small portion of the left of the parallel, and the right of the trenches was only occasionally patrolled.
On the 28th of July, Marshal Soult attacked Lord Wellington, in the hope of relieving Pampeluna, and the result of the action not being known to Sir Thomas Graham, he, on the 29th, embarked all the artillery and stores at Los Passages, and sent the transports to sea; the siege was therefore converted into a blockade, the guard continuing to hold the trenches.
August 3rd, the enemy surprised a patrol in the parallel, and made it prisoners.
On the 6th the guns and stores were re-landed at Los Passages, and on the 18th the additional artillery and ammunition arrived from England.
On the 24th the entire of the trenches was again occupied, and the siege recommenced.
On the left, two additional batteries for thirteen guns, to breach the face of the left demi-bastion and the curtain above it, at seven hundred yards’ distance, were commenced, and on the right, cover was begun for seven additional howitzers, four sixty-eight-pounder carronades, twenty-one twenty-four-pounders, and sixteen mortars, being forty-eight pieces of ordnance, in addition to the thirty-two put in battery for the previous operation.
At midnight the enemy made a sortie, entered the advanced part of the trenches, and carried confusion into the parallel; in attempting, however, to sweep along its right, they were checked by a part of the guard of the trenches, and obliged to retire, carrying off with them about twelve prisoners.