The siege of Olivenza gave little trouble. The only difficulty was the improvising of a siege-train, even on the very modest scale required to deal with such a weak place. It was invested, as we have seen, on the 9th. On the 10th Major Alexander Dickson of the Portuguese artillery, and Captain Squire of the Engineers reconnoitred the place, and determined that the proper starting-point for the attack was the same ruined lunette, outside the walls, which the French had chosen as their first base in January. On the night of the 11th this point was occupied with the loss of one man only, killed by the enemy’s ill-directed fire. A battery for six guns was constructed in the gorge of the ruined work, but the pieces themselves, which Dickson went to choose from Elvas, did not arrive till the 14th; the cask-bridge at Jerumenha being too weak to bear them, they and their ammunition had to be ferried over on the flying bridges. The six 24-pounders were placed in position that same night. At daybreak they opened, and by the time that they had fired seventy rounds each, long ere noon, a practicable breach was made in the nearest bastion. Thereupon the governor, seeing that to have stood an assault with his handful of men would have been madness, surrendered at discretion. He marched out with only 9 officers and 357 men under arms, giving up also 96 sick, and some commissaries and medical officers. Several of his miserable stock of fifteen guns were found to be practically useless save to make a noise, for (as has already been mentioned) they were fixed not on proper carriages, but on the main timbers and wheels of ox-carts, and could not be elevated or depressed. The governor deserves some credit for having held out five days; if the Allies had been aware of the weakness of the garrison, they would have swamped it at once by an escalade.