We lost in this affair about two hundred men, many of whom were cut down in the works, and several in the depots far in the rear, by a body of the enemy’s light cavalry that galloped out of the town at the moment the sortie commenced. Absurd as this may read, it is nevertheless true: the garrison of Badajoz, cooped up within its walls, without a foot of ground that they could call their own beyond the glacis, and, in a manner, begirt by an army of fifteen thousand men, were—by their admirable arrangement of their forces, or by the superlative neglect of our people, enabled to ride through our lines—unopposed by a single dragoon!—from right to left! Brilliant, however, as was this exploit, it was of no such service to the garrison; their loss exceeded four hundred men, and the capture of a few dozen spades and shovels but ill repaid them for so great a sacrifice of lives, at any time valuable, but in their present position doubly so. The sortie being at length repulsed, and order once more restored, the works in the trenches were continued under a torrent of rain and fire of artillery. Lieutenant White of the 45th, who had been much distinguished in the batteries, was struck by a shell (without a fuse) on the head, which killed him on the spot; he was reading a book at the moment, and Lieutenant Cotton of the 88th, who was sitting beside him, was so covered with his blood, that it was thought at first he had been frightfully wounded. Up to this time the fall of rain had been so violent as to threaten the total failure of the operation; it had never ceased since the 17th, and the trenches were a perfect river. The soldiers were working up to their knees in water, and the fatigue and hardships they endured were great indeed, but there was no complaint—not even a murmur to be heard! The next day, the 22nd, the pontoon bridge over the Guadiana was carried away by the floods which the late rains had caused in the river, and the stream became so rapid that the flying bridges could not be made use of, and, in short, all supplies from the other side were cut off. In the trenches matters were in as bad a state, for the earth no longer retained its consistency, and it was impossible to get it into any shape. On the 24th, however, the weather happily settled fine, and much progress was made towards forwarding the works; but this and the following day were perhaps two of the most dreadful recorded in the annals of sieges. The soldiers laboured with a degree of hardihood bordering on desperation, while the engineers braved every danger with as much composure as if they either set no value upon their lives, or thought their bodies impregnable to shot or shell. In proportion as our works advanced, the enemy redoubled his fire, and the attempt made by us to drag the heavy guns through the mud, or to form magazines for the gunpowder, was almost certain death; but not content with the destruction which his fire carried throughout our ranks, Phillipon