and
the besieged. The parallels were resolutely pushed on in spite of
rocky soil, broken tools, bitter weather, and the incessant pelting of
the French guns. The temper of the British troops is illustrated by an
incident which George Napier--the youngest of the three
Napiers--relates. The three others were gallant and remarkable
soldiers. Charles Napier in India and elsewhere made history; William,
in his wonderful tale of the Peninsular war, wrote history; and George,
if he had not the literary genius of the one nor the strategic skill of
the other, was a most gallant soldier. "I was a field-officer of the
trenches," he says, "when a 13-inch shell from the town fell in the
midst of us. I called to the men to lie down flat, and they instantly
obeyed orders, except one of them, an Irishman and an old marine, but a
most worthless drunken dog, who trotted up to the shell, the fuse of
which was still burning, and striking it with his spade, knocked the
fuse out; then taking the immense shell in his hands, brought it to me,
saying, 'There she is for you now, yer 'anner. I've knocked the life
out of the crater.'"

The besieged brought fifty heavy guns to reply to the thirty light
pieces by which they were assailed, and day and night the bellow of
eighty pieces boomed sullenly over the doomed city and echoed faintly
back from the nearer hills, while the walls crashed to the stroke of
the bullet. The English fire made up by fierceness and accuracy for
what it lacked in weight; but the sap made no progress, the guns showed
signs of being worn out, and although two apparent breaches had been
made, the counterscarp was not destroyed. Yet Wellington determined
to attack, and, in his characteristic fashion, to attack by night. The
siege had lasted ten days, and Marmont, with an army stronger than his
own, was lying within four marches. That he had not appeared already
on the scene was wonderful.

In a general order issued on the evening of the 19th Wellington wrote,
"Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed this evening." The great breach was a
sloping gap in the wall at its northern angle, about a hundred feet
wide. The French had crowned it with two guns loaded with grape; the
slope was strewn with bombs, hand-grenades, and bags of powder; a great
mine pierced it beneath; a deep ditch had been cut betwixt the breach
and the adjoining ramparts, and these were crowded with riflemen. The
third division, under General Mackinn