On the Western front, from the Ebro to the Huerba, there had been in August nothing more than a weak wall, many parts of which were composed of the rear-sides of convents and buildings. In front of this line there had been constructed by November 10 a very different defence. A solid rampart reveted with bricks taken from ruined houses, and furnished with a broad terrace for artillery, and a ditch forty-five feet deep now covered the entire western side of the city. The convents of the Augustinians and the Trinitarians, which had been outside the walls during the earlier siege, had been taken into this new _enceinte_ and served as bastions in it. There being a space 600 yards long between them, where the curtain would have been unprotected by flanking fires, a great semicircular battery had been thrown out, which acted as a third bastion on this side. Strong earthworks had also been built up to cover the Portillo and Carmen gates. As an outlying fort there was the castle of the Aljafferia, which had received extensive repairs, and was connected with the _enceinte_ by a ditch and a covered way. It would completely enfilade any attacks made on the north-western part of the new wall. On the Southern front of the defences the work done had been even more important. Here the new fortifications had been carried down to the brink of the ravine of the Huerba, so as to make that stream the wet ditch of the town. Two great redoubts were pushed beyond it: one called the redoubt of ‘Our Lady of the Pillar’ lay at the bridge outside the Santa Engracia gate. It was provided with a deep narrow ditch, into which the water of the river had been turned, and armed with eight guns. The corresponding fort, at the south-east angle of the town, was made by fortifying the convent of San José, on the Valencia road, just beyond the Huerba. This was a quadrangle 120 yards long by eighty broad, furnished with a ditch, and with a covered way with palisades, cut in the counterscarp. It held twelve heavy guns, and a garrison of no less than 3,000 men. Between San José and the Pillar redoubt, the old town wall above the Huerba had been strengthened and thickened, and several new batteries had been built upon it. It could not well be assailed till the two projecting works in front of it should be reduced, and if they should fall it stood on higher ground and completely commanded their sites. The convent of Santa Engracia, so much disputed during the first siege, had been turned into a sort of fortress, and heavily armed with guns of position.