For some days after the sortie, however, Soult paid little attention to Mendizabal, and concentrated all his efforts against the fortress. Having completed the first parallel, and established several new batteries in it, he proceeded with his operations against the Pardaleras fort. His plan was very daring--not to say hazardous--for on the afternoon of the 11th of February, when the work was much battered but still quite defensible, he determined to try to capture it by escalade. At dusk two columns, making about 500 men, issued from the trenches and dashed at the Pardaleras: the left-hand column coasting round its flank made for the gorge, which was only defended by a row of palisades. These were so weak that they were broken down or hewn to pieces by the assailants without much difficulty. At the same time the right column, which had entered the ditch, found an open postern into which it made its way. Attacked on two sides, the garrison evacuated the work, and fled into the city, leaving 60 men killed or prisoners behind them. The French, who had lost only 4 killed and 32 wounded in this reckless venture, established themselves in the Pardaleras. But the governor turned against the fort all the guns of the next two bastions, and the captors had to burrow and lie low, till on the night of the 12th-13th a trench was run out from the first parallel, which gave safe ingress and egress. During the intervening day the besiegers lost more men in holding the work than they had in storming it[71], and the Pardaleras, close though it was to the walls, proved to be ground from which it was most difficult to push forward while the artillery fire of the town was unsubdued. To transform the open gorge in its rear into a base for new approaches was a slow and expensive business, and the siege made a much less rapid progress than had been hoped. [71] 3 officers and 48 men killed and wounded according to La Mare, _Siége de Badajoz_, p. 58.