Shawe’s situation, which had always been one of peril, now became desperate; he called out to his next senior officer (Captain Oates of the 88th) and said, “Oates, what are we to do?” but at the instant he was struck in the neck by a bullet, and fell bathed in blood. It immediately occurred to Oates, who now took the command, that although the ladders were too short to mount the wall, they were long enough to go across the ditch! He at once formed the desperate resolution of throwing three of them over the fosse, by which a sort of bridge was constructed; he led the way, followed by the few of his brave soldiers who were unhurt, and, forcing their passage through an embrasure that had been but bolstered up in the hurry of the moment, carried—after a brief, desperate, but decisive conflict—the point allotted to him. Sixty grenadiers of the Italian guard[23] were the first encountered by Oates and his party; they supplicated for mercy, but, either by accident or design, one of them discharged his firelock, and the ball struck Oates in the thigh; he fell, and his men, who had before been greatly excited, now became furious when they beheld their commanding officer weltering in his blood. Every man of the Italian guard was put to death on the spot. ----- Footnote 23: There were no troops of the Italian guard in this part of Spain, though there were some of the “_Velites_” in Catalonia. Italians there were, but only men incorporated in ordinary French line regiments. -----