The Army of Estremadura having been practically destroyed,--the demoralized remnant of 4,000 horse and foot which escaped into Portugal counted for nothing,--Soult could at last besiege Badajoz from both sides of the river, and reckon on being undisturbed in his operations. He left three battalions, a battery, and five regiments of Montbrun’s cavalry on the north bank, to invest the fort of San Cristobal, and returned, with the rest of the force that had won the battle, to his lines. There was still much to be done, for the governor Menacho was resolute, and the garrison had been raised to over 8,000 men by the influx of Mendizabal’s fugitives. The siege was destined to last three weeks longer, and might have been prolonged to a far greater duration if Menacho had not been killed on March 4; as long as he lived the defence was vigorous and honourable. Though Soult could concentrate all his attention on the approaches towards the curtain between the bastions of Santiago and San Juan, they did not progress very rapidly. Menacho brought up all the artillery that could be readily moved on the threatened front, and continued to pound the ruins of the Pardaleras and the trenches leading up to it. It was only on the night of the 24th February that a battery was at last completed under the right flank of the fort, and another under its left, to keep down the fire of the defenders. Nor was it till the 28th of the same month and the 1st of March that the zigzags began to creep forward from the second parallel towards the body of the place. On the 2nd of March the approaches reached the demi-lune outside the bastion of San Juan, and the French could look down into the ditch, but they found the counterscarp in good order, and the palisades intact. On the 3rd they commenced mining, with the object of blowing in the counterscarp and filling the ditch. But their work was stopped by a vigorous sortie, the last which Menacho sent out. A small column of Spaniards passed out of the left bastion, seized and demolished the advanced trenches, and spiked the twelve guns which armed the two nearest batteries. The progress of the besiegers was checked for a day--but at a disastrous cost, for the governor himself, while watching the effect of the sortie from the ramparts, was killed by a chance shot. His place was taken by the senior brigadier in the place, José Imaz, a man of desponding heart and utterly lacking in energy. It was a thousand pities that, when the rout of the Gebora took place, neither La Carrera nor Carlos de España had been driven back into Badajoz, for both these officers were men of desperate resolution, who would have played out a losing game to the last moment with stubborn courage. The French narratives note that from the moment of Menacho’s death the defence slackened; it became partly passive, and was no longer conducted with common skill. No more sorties were made, and there seemed to be a lack of ingenuity in the measures taken to resist the