When the tempest of fire was calmed, we did not know ourselves. We were transfigured, and something new and unknown palpitated in the depths of our souls, giving us an unheard-of fierceness. The following day Palafox said, with much eloquence: “Nor balls, nor bombs, nor shells shall make our faces change color, nor can all France accomplish that!”
XI
The fortress of San José had surrendered, or rather the French had entered it when their artillery had reduced it to powder, and all of its defenders had fallen, one by one, to lie among its fragments. The Imperial soldiers, on entering, found heaps of bodies and stones matted together with blood. They could not establish themselves there because they were flanked by the batteries of Los Martires and the Botanical Garden, so they continued operations by mining, in order to possess themselves of those two points. The fortifications which we held were so nearly destroyed that a general agreement was urgent, and the terrible orders, calling upon all the inhabitants of Saragossa to work in renewing them. The proclamation said that every citizen should carry a gun in one hand and spade in the other.
The twelfth and thirteenth were without rest, the fire diminishing a little because the besiegers, warned by sad experience, did not wish to risk any more hand-to-hand conflicts. Understanding that theirs was a work of patience and skill, rather than of boldness and bravery, they opened slowly, and with security, roads and mines which should lead to the possession of the redoubt without loss of men. It was almost necessary to build our walls anew, or rather to substitute sacks of earth for them, an operation in which many friars, canons, civil officials, children, and women were occupied. The artillery was almost useless, the fosse about filled up, and it was necessary to continue the defence at short range. And so we wore through the thirteenth, protecting the works as we rebuilt them, suffering much, and seeing ourselves constantly decreasing in numbers, although new men came to take the places of the many that we lost. On the fourteenth the enemy’s artillery tried to demolish our new walls, opening breaches for us on the front and at the sides. They did not dare to try a new assault, contenting themselves with opening a mine in such a direction that we could not in any way cover it with our fire, nor with that of any battery near by.
Our valorous tantalizing earthworks would soon be covered by the fires of the French batteries, which were hurling to the four winds the earth of which they were formed. In this situation, surrender was inevitable sooner or later. Indeed we were at the mercy of the French arms as a ship at the mercy of the waves of the ocean. Flanked by roads and zigzags, through which a strong and clever enemy might walk without danger, protected by all the resources of science, our bulwarks of defence were like one man surrounded by an army. We had no serviceable cannons, nor could we bring other new ones, because the walls would not have borne them. Our only resource was to keep watch of the redoubt in order to fly from it at the moment when the French should enter and destroy the bridge, in order to prevent them from following us. This was done; and on the night of the fourteenth they worked without rest on the mine, and we placed small mines at the bridge, hoping that the following day the enemy would try to mount by that wall. But this did not happen. Not daring to make another assault without all the precautions and security possible, they continued their work of digging very nearly up to our fosse. In this labor our indefatigable fusileers did them little damage. We were desperate, but without power to do anything. Our desperation was of no avail; it was a useless force, like the rage of a lunatic in his cage.
We drew out the nails from the tablet which proclaimed ours to be the unconquerable redoubt, in order to take away with us that witness of our justifiable arrogance. At nightfall the fortification was abandoned, only forty remaining to keep it until the end, and shoot all they could, as our captain said that no chance might be lost to lose the enemy a couple of men. From the Torre del Pino we saw the retreat of the forty at about eight o’clock in the evening, after they had met the invaders with bayonet-thrusts; they retreated fighting bravely.
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