To ensure the success of an enterprise upon which so much was at stake, twenty thousand men were to be brought into action as I have described; by five o’clock all the ladders were portioned out to those destined to mount them. The time fixed for the assemblage of the troops was eight; that for the attack ten. The day passed over heavily, and hour after hour was counted, each succeeding one seeming to double the length of the one that preceded it; but, true as the needle to the pole, the long-expected moment arrived, and the clear but deep note of the town clock was now heard throughout our lines, as it tolled the hour of eight, and ere its last vibration had ceased the vast mass of assailants were in battle array. A thick and dusky vapour, issuing from the Guadiana and Rivillas, hung above the heads of the hostile forces, and hid alike, by its heavy veil, each from the view of its opponent; the batteries on both sides were silent, as if they reserved their efforts for the approaching struggle; and, except the gentle noise which the rippling of the Guadiana created, or the croaking of the countless frogs that filled the marshes on each side of its banks, everything was as still as if the night was to be one of quiet repose; and a passing stranger, unacquainted with the previous events, might easily have supposed that our army were no otherwise occupied than in the ordinary routine of an evening parade; but Phillipon, profiting by this cessation, retrenched and barricaded the breaches in a manner hereafter to be described. So soon as each division had formed on its ground in open column of companies, the arms were piled, and the officers and soldiers either walked about in groups of five or six together, or sat down under an olive-tree to observe, at their ease, the arrangements of the different brigades which were to take a part in the contest. Then, again, might be seen some writing to their friends—a hasty scroll, no doubt, and, in my opinion, an ill-timed one. It is a bad time, at the moment of entering a breach, to write to a man’s father or mother, much less his wife, to tell them so; and, besides, it has an unseasonable appearance in the eyes of the soldiers, who are decidedly the most competent judges of what their officers should be, or, at least, what _they_ would _wish_ them to be, which is tantamount, at such a crisis.