own strategic instincts. There were military engineers in petticoats who demonstrated a profound knowledge of war by walling up certain spaces and opening others to the light, and for purposes of firing. The walls of the eastern side were spiked along their length. The turrets of the wall of Caesar Augustus, built to resist arrows and sling stones, now upheld cannon.
If any one of these pieces were turned upon one of the neighboring roofs, the roof or the entire house, whatever was there, would be immediately blown to pieces. Many passages had been obstructed, and two of the religious edifices of the suburb, San Augustine and Las Mónicas, were veritable fortresses. The wall had been rebuilt and strengthened; the batteries had been joined together, and our engineers had calculated the positions and the reach of the enemy’s guns very well, in order to accommodate our defences to them.
Our line had two advanced points, the mill of Goicoechea and a house which, because it belonged to a certain Don Victoriano González, has gone into history by the name of the Casa de González. This line, running from the Puerta Quemada, met first the battery of Palafox, then the Molino, the mill, in the city, then the garden of San Augustine; it continued to the mill of Goicoechea, situated a little out of the district, then to the orchard of Las Mónicas, and on to those of San Augustine; further up, a great battery and the house of González. This is all that I remember of Las Tenerías. There was over there a place called the Sepulcro, because of its nearness to a church of that name. More than one portion of the suburb, indeed, deserved the name of sepulchre. I tell you no more in order not to tire you with these descriptive minutiae, unnecessary to one who knows those glorious places, and insufficient for one who has been unable to visit them.