The right batteries opened fire upon San José and the Pilar, and what a fire! The whole army seemed behind the cannon. Away with breakfasts, away with the morning meal, away with tidbits!—the men of Aragón will have no food but glory!
The unconquerable fortress answered the insolent besieger with a tremendous cannonade, and soon the great soul of our fatherland moved within us. The balls, beating upon the brick walls and the earthworks, beat down the redoubt as if it were a toy pelted with stones by a boy. The grenades, falling among us, burst with a great noise, and the bombs, passing with awful majesty over our heads, went on to fall into the streets and upon the roofs of the houses.
Everybody out! Let there be no idle or cowardly people in the city. The men to the walls, the women to the bloody hospitals, the children and priests to carry ammunition! Let no notice be taken of these dreadful and burning things which bore through roofs, penetrate dwelling-houses, open gates, pierce floors, descend to the cellars, and, bursting, scatter the flames of hell upon the tranquil hearth, surprising with death the aged invalid on his couch and the child in his cradle. Nothing of this sort matters. Everybody out into the street, and thus save honor though the city perish, and the churches and convents and hospitals and the estates which are but earthly things! The Saragossans, despising material good as they despised life, lived by their spirits in the infinite spaces of the ideal.
In the first moments the Captain-General and many other distinguished personages visited us—such as Don Mariano Cereso the priest of Sas, General O’Neill, San Genís, and Don Pedro Ric. There was also there the brave and generous Don José Montoria, who embraced his son, saying to him: “Today is the day to conquer or to die. We will meet each other in heaven.”