Foy, seeing the curtain-wall continuing to crumble, and a 60-foot breach established, resolved to storm that night, and sent in at 7.20 three columns composed of eight French and eight Italian flank companies for the assault--the former to the breach, the latter to try to escalade a low angle near the Bilbao gate. Both attacks succeeded, despite a heavy but ill-aimed fire from the defenders, and the Spaniards were driven through the town and into the castle, where they maintained themselves. Alvarez had made preparations for evacuation--while two companies held the steep steps which were the only way up to the castle, the rest of the garrison embarked at its back on the boats of the British squadron. Some were killed in the water by the French fire, some drowned, but the large majority got off. By three in the morning there were only 100 men left in the castle: Alvarez had detailed them to throw the guns into the sea, and to fire the magazines, both of which duties they accomplished, before the early dawn. When, by means of ladders, the French made their way into an embrasure of the defences, some of this desperate band were killed. But it is surprising to hear that most of them got away by boat from the small jetty at the back of the castle. They probably owed their escape to the fact that the stormers had spent the night in riotous atrocities vying with those of Badajoz on a small scale. Instead of finishing off their job by taking the castle, they had spent the night in rape and plunder in the town[396]. The Spaniards declared that the total loss of their garrison was only 100 men, and the statement is borne out by the dispatch of Captain Bloye of the _Lyra_. Foy wrote to Clausel that the whole business had only cost him fifty men. The two statements seem equally improbable, for the siege had lasted for six days of open trenches, and both sides had fought with great resolution[397]. But the really important thing to note about this little affair is that it absorbed three French divisions for sixteen days in the most critical month of 1813. Eleven thousand men were tied down in a remote corner of Biscay, before a patched-up mediaeval wall, while Longa was running riot in Alava and breaking the line of communication with France--and (what is more important) while Wellington’s columns were silently gliding into place for the great stroke on the Douro. Colonel Alvarez could boast that his thousand men had served a very useful and honourable end during the great campaign. He and they were landed by Captain Bloye at Bermeo, and went off over the hills to join Longa: the majority of them must have been present at the battle of Vittoria, some six weeks after their escape by sea.