On the eastern front of the city from San José to the Ebro, the Huerba still serves as a ditch to the place, but is not so steep or so difficult as in its upper course. Here the suburb of the Tanneries (Las Tenerias), where that stream falls into the Ebro, had been turned into a strong projecting redoubt, whose fire commanded both the opposite bank of the Ebro on one side, and the lower reaches of the Huerba on the other. Half way between this redoubt and San José was a great battery (generally called the ‘Palafox Battery’) at the Porta Quemada, whose fires, crossing those of the other two works, commanded all the low ground outside the eastern front of the city. It only remains to speak of the fortifications of the transpontine suburb of San Lazaro. This was by nature the weakest part of the defences, as the suburb is built in low marshy ground on the river’s edge. Here deep cuttings had been made and filled with water, three heavy batteries had been erected, and the convents of San Lazaro and Jesus had been strengthened, crenellated and loopholed, and turned into forts. The whole of these works were joined by palisades and ditches. They formed a great _tête-de-pont_, requiring a garrison of 3,000 men. As an additional defence for the flanks of the suburb three or four gunboats, manned by sailors brought up from Cartagena, had been launched on the Ebro, and commanded the reach of the river which runs along the northern side of the city. Yet great as were the works which now sheathed the body of Saragossa, the people had not forgotten the moral lesson of the first siege. When her walls had been beaten down, she had resisted behind her barricades and the solid houses of her narrow streets. They fully realized that this might again have to be done, if the French should succeed in breaking in at some point of the long _enceinte_. Accordingly, every preparation was made for street fighting. Houses were loopholed, and communications were pierced between them, without any regard for private property or convenience. Ground-floor windows were built up, and arrangements made for the speedy and solid closing of all doors. Traverses were erected in the streets, to guard as far as was possible against the dangers of a bombardment, and an elaborate system of barricades, arranged in proper tactical relation to each other, was sketched out. The walls might be broken, but the people boasted that the kernel should be harder than the shell.