Monastery of Jesus. Behind this scene, reflected in the waters of the great river, could be seen a horrible fire. There was an interminable turmoil, a hoarse clamor of the voices of cannon and of human yells. Dense clouds of smoke, renewed unceasingly, mounted confusedly to the heavens. All the breastworks of this position, which were constructed with bricks from neighboring brickyards, formed with the earth of the kilns a reddish mass. One might have believed that the ground had been mixed together with blood.
The French held their front towards the Barcelona road and the Juslibol, where more kilns and gardens lie at the left of the second of those two ways. Thence the Twelfth had furiously attacked our entrenchments, making their way by the Barcelona road, and challenging with impetuous intrepidity the crossfires of San Lazarus and that of the place called El Marcelo. Their courage lay in striking audacious blows upon the batteries, and their tenacity produced a veritable hecatomb. They fell in great numbers; the ranks were broken, and, being instantly filled by others, they repeated the attack. At times they almost reached the parapets, and a thousand individual contests increased the horror of the scene. They went in advance of their leaders, brandishing their cutlasses, like desperate men who had made it a question of honor to die before a heap of bricks, and in that frightful destruction which wrenched the life from hundreds of men every minute, they disappeared, flung down upon mother earth, soldiers and sergeants, ensigns, captains, and colonels. It was a veritable struggle between two peoples; and while the fires of the first siege were burning in our hearts, the French came on thirsting for vengeance with all the passion of offended manhood, worse even than the passion of the warrior.
It was this untimely bloodthirstiness that lost them the day. They should have begun by demolishing our works with their artillery, observing the serenity which a siege demands, and not have engaged in those hand to hand combats before positions defended by a people like the one that