On the 6th and 7th the besiegers again began to sap forward towards the second _enceinte_, with the object of establishing a second parallel on its glacis, but with no great success. There was little or no effective fire from the batteries on San Miguel to keep down the artillery of the besieged, and the work at the sap-head was so deadly that the engineers could hardly expect the men to do much: however, the trench was driven forward to within thirty yards of the palisades. So useless were the howitzers in No. 2 battery that two of them were removed, and replaced by two French field-pieces from those captured in the hornwork on September 20; these, despite of their small calibre, worked decidedly better. The heavy guns in the Napoleon Battery devoted themselves to keeping down the fire of the two surviving 18-pounders in battery No. 2, and on the 7th knocked one from its carriage and broke off one of its trunnions. This left only one heavy piece in working order! But the artisans of the artillery park, doing their best, rigged up both the gun injured on this day and that disabled on October 1 upon block carriages, with a sort of cradle arrangement to hold them up on the side where a trunnion was gone; and it was found that they could be fired, if a very reduced charge was used. When anything like the full amount of powder was employed, they jumped off their carriages, as was natural, considering that they were only properly attached to them on one side. Of course, their battering power was hopelessly reduced by the small charge. The artillery diarists of the siege call them ‘the two _lame_ guns’ during the last fortnight of their employment. On October 8 Dubreton, growing once more anxious at the sight of the advance of the trenches toward the second _enceinte_, ordered another sally, which was executed by 400 men three hours after midnight. It was almost as successful as that of October 5. The working party of Pack’s Portuguese and the covering party from the K.G.L. brigade of the 1st Division were taken quite unawares, and driven out of the advanced works with very heavy loss. The trench was completely levelled, and many tools carried away, before the supports in reserve, under Somers Cocks of the 1/79th--the hero of the assault on the Hornwork--came up and drove the French back to their palisades. Cocks himself was killed--he was an officer of the highest promise who would have gone far if fate had spared him, and was the centre of a large circle of friends who have left enthusiastic appreciations of his greatness of spirit and ready wit[43]. The besiegers lost 184 men in this unhappy business, of whom 133 belonged to the German Legion: 18 of them were prisoners carried off into the Castle[44]. The French casualties were no more than 11 killed and 22 wounded--only a sixth part of those of the Allies.