The stormers reached their appointed place apparently undiscovered, and the attack would have been delivered--according to Suchet’s dispatch--without any preliminary firing, but for an accident. The Marshal says that the Spaniards had pushed an exploring patrol down the hillside, which fell in with the French pickets and drew their fire. Thereupon the assaulting columns in the cistern, thinking themselves discovered, let off a few shots and charged uphill, a little ahead of the appointed time, and before the Italian demonstration had begun[14]. The governor, Andriani, in his dispatch, makes no mention of this, but merely says that about 2 a.m. his sentinels thought that they detected movements on the slopes, and that a short time afterwards a fierce attack was delivered. At any rate the garrison was not surprised as Suchet had hoped. [14] Vacani (v. p. 381) contradicts Suchet, saying that there was no Spanish patrol, and that the French pickets fired from nervousness at an imaginary foe. Owing to the lowness, however, of the walls blocking the two old breaches, the assailants had, in their first rush, a fair chance of breaking in. Many ladders were successfully planted, and repeatedly small parties of the French got a footing on the wooden parapets. If the garrison had flinched, the storm might have succeeded: but far from flinching, they offered a desperate resistance, overthrew the ladders, slew all who had gained the top of the _enceinte_, and kept up a furious musketry fire, which laid low many of the soldiers who kept pressing forward to the breaches. It was to no purpose that the demonstration by the Italians below San Pedro now began: the Spaniards fired hard and fast in this direction also, but did not withdraw any men from the real point of attack, where they maintained themselves very courageously. It was in vain that Colonel Gudin brought up his reserve: it could make no head, and the survivors threw themselves down among the rocks and ruins in front of the wall--unwilling to recede, but quite unable to advance. Seeing his attack a hopeless failure, Suchet ordered the stormers back just before daylight began to appear. They had lost 247 killed and wounded out of 900 men engaged: the garrison only 15 killed and less than 30 wounded[15]. [15] Vacani makes the losses 360 instead of 247, and it is possible that Suchet has given only the casualties at the main assault, and not those in the distant demonstrations. Vacani says that the Italians lost 52 men in their false attack.