the long-completed batteries on the Cerro de San Miguel. It was not till the afternoon of the 24th that fine weather at last set in; this permitted the guns to be brought at once into the two batteries facing the Picurina, and, after herculean efforts, into other batteries (nos. 4 and 5) in the low ground also. Three days at least had been lost from the vile weather. On the morning of the 25th all the batteries opened simultaneously, ten guns against the Picurina, eighteen against the parts of the fortress behind it. The fort was completely silenced, as was the little lunette of San Roque. Not much damage appeared to have been inflicted on the Picurina beyond the breaking of many of its palisades, and the degradation of its salient angle. But Wellington ordered that it should be stormed that night, in order that he might make up for the lost time of the 20th-24th. The storm was duly carried out by General Kempt and 500 men of the Light and the 3rd Divisions, at ten o’clock that night. It was a desperate affair, for the ditch was deep, and not in the least filled with rubbish, and the scarp was intact save at the extreme salient angle. Though the garrison’s guns had been silenced, they kept up a furious fire of musketry, which disabled 100 men before the stormers reached the ditch. The main hope of the assault had been that two turning columns might break in at the gorge: but it was found so strongly closed, with a double row of palisades and a cutting, that all efforts to force an entrance were repelled with loss. Baffled here, one party tried the desperate expedient of casting three long ladders, not into, but _across_ the ditch on the right flank of the fort, which though deep was not so broad but that a 30-foot ladder would reach from its lip to the row of fraises, or projecting beams, ranged horizontally at the top of the scarp some feet below the brim of the parapet. The ladders sagged down but did not break, and some fifty men headed by Captain Oates of the 88th ran across on the rungs and got a lodgement inside the fort. At the same moment General Kempt launched the reserve of the storming party--100 men, mostly from the 2/83rd and headed by Captain Powys of that regiment--at the exact salient of the fort, the only place where it was seriously damaged, and succeeded in breaking in. The garrison, who made a stubborn resistance, were overpowered--83 were killed or wounded, the governor, Colonel Gaspard-Thierry, and 145 taken prisoners, only 1 officer and 40 men escaped into the town. The losses of the stormers had been over 50 per cent. of the men engaged! Four officers and 50 rank and file were killed, 15 officers and 250 men wounded, out of a little over 500 who joined in the assault. Phillipon tried a sortie from the lunette of San Roque, just as the fort fell, in hopes to recover it: but the battalion which came out was easily beaten off by the fire of the men in the trenches to the right, and lost 50 killed and wounded.