The Guards in their attack, 100 yards to the right of the breach, had an even harder task than the Germans, for their storm was a mere escalade. It was executed with great decision: issuing from the front trench they ran up to the line of broken palisades, passed through gaps in it, and applied their ladders to the face of the rampart of the second _enceinte_. Many of them succeeded in mounting, and they established themselves successfully on the parapet, and seized a long stretch of it, so long that some of their left-hand men got into touch with the Germans who had entered at the breach. But they could not clear the enemy out of the _terre-pleine_ of the second _enceinte_, where a solid body of the French kept up a rolling fire upon them, while the garrison of the upper line maintained a still fiercer fusillade from their high-lying point of vantage. The Guards were for about ten minutes within the wall, and made several attempts to get forward without success. At the end of that time a French reserve advanced from their left, and charging in flank the disordered mass within the _enceinte_ drove them out again. The Guards retired as best they could to the advanced trenches, having lost 85 officers and men out of the 300 engaged. The French returned their casualties at 11 killed and 30 wounded. Wellington’s dispatch, narrating the disaster, gives the most handsome testimonial to the resolution of both the bodies of stormers. ‘It is impossible to represent in adequate terms the conduct of the Guards and the German Legion upon this occasion. And I am quite satisfied that if it had been possible to maintain the posts which they gained with so much gallantry, these troops would have maintained them[56].’ But why were 600 men only sent forward, and no support given them during the precious ten minutes when their first rush had carried them within the walls? Where were the brigades to which the stormers belonged? It is impossible not to subscribe to Burgoyne’s angry comment that ‘the miserable, doubting, unmilitary policy of small storming-parties’ caused the mischief[57]. He adds, ‘large bodies encourage one another, and carry with them confidence of success: if the Castle of Badajoz was stormed with ten or twelve ladders, and not more than 40 or 50 men could mount at once, I am convinced that it was only carried because the whole 3rd Division was there, and the emulation between the officers of the different regiments got their men to mount; although we lost 600 or 700 men, it caused success--which eventually saves men.’