flanked the country house, while the rest followed the high road, pursuing the fugitives; but Renovales dashed forward and led us on, cutting down and bayoneting those who were defending the house. At the moment when we set foot within the first defence I noticed that my rank was thinned out. I saw some of my companions fall, breathing their last sighs. I looked to my right, fearing not to find my beloved friend among the living; but God had preserved him. Montoria and I were unharmed.
We could not spend much time in communicating to each other the satisfaction that we felt at finding ourselves still alive, because Renovales gave orders to follow on, in the direction of the line of entrenchments that the French were raising. We abandoned the high road and made a deflection, turning to the right with the intention of joining the volunteers of Huesca, who were attacking by the Muela road.
It may be understood by what I have related that the French did not expect that sortie, and that, taken completely unawares, they were holding there, besides the scanty force that kept the works, the engineers occupied in digging the trenches of the first parallel. We attacked them vigorously, turning upon them a murderous fire, improving the minutes well before the dreaded reinforcements should arrive. We took prisoners those whom we met without arms; we shot those who had them. We took the picks and spades—all this with unequalled energy, animating one another with fiery words, exalted above all by the thought that they were watching us from the city.
In this attack we were fortunate, for while we were destroying those at work on the entrenchments, the troops who had made the sortie on the left were carrying on a successful struggle with the detachments which the enemy had in the Bernardona. While the volunteers of Huesca, the grenadiers of Palafox, and the Walloon guards defeated the French infantry, the squadron of Numancia and Olivenza cavalry cautiously