be defended?”
“Does it not have to be defended?” said a soldier. “After all, it is only a trifle which has happened, a few more dead. We will try to regain the church of San Francisco.”
We all looked at that man who spoke so serenely of the impossible. The sublime terseness of his expression of perseverance seemed like a jest, and in that epoch of the incredible, similar jests were wont to end in reality.
Let those who hesitate to give credence to my words open the history, and they will see that some few dozens of men, wasted, famished, barefooted, and half-naked, some of them wounded, held out all that day in the tower. Not content with holding it, they went out over the roof of the church, opening here and there many places in the roof, and paying no attention to the fire directed upon them from the hospital, they began to throw hand-grenades upon the French, obliging them to abandon the church when night came. All of the night was passed in attempts by the enemy to regain it; but they could not accomplish it until the following day, when the riflemen on the roof retired, passing to the house of Sástago.