We were not long unemployed. On the tenth night after our arrival the enemy made a formidable attack on our outposts at the village of Pastores. The advanced sentry, Jack Walsh, passed the word to the next, who communicated with the picket, and in an instant every man was on his legs. Walsh waited quietly until the French officer who headed the advance approached to within a few paces of where he was standing, when he deliberately took aim at him, and shot him dead. The remainder retired for a moment, panic-struck, no doubt, at the fate of their leader; they, however, rallied—for they were not only brave, but, what is almost as great a stimulus, hungry—and they forced our advance to give way; but Colonel Alexander Wallace, placing himself at the head of his men, drove back this band of cormorants, and they never molested us afterwards. Notwithstanding that we were thus placed with respect to Rodrigo, the army of Portugal maintained its position; the army of the North, commanded by Count Dorsenne, remained in its cantonments on the Douro, and Rodrigo was thus abandoned to its own resources. Lord Wellington was not an idle spectator of this supineness on the part of the two French generals. As early as the month of August he directed that a large number of the tradesmen[18] of our army, with a proportion of officers, should be attached to the Engineers, in which branch we were deficient in point of numbers; and these men in less than six weeks gained much useful information, and besides, made a quantity of fascines and gabions sufficient for the intended operations. By the 5th of September the town of Ciudad Rodrigo was completely blockaded, and we were employed in making arrangements for its siege when the two generals, Dorsenne and Marmont, made theirs to drive us back on Portugal. ----- Footnote 18: _I.e._ the men who in civil life had been smiths, carpenters, joiners, etc. ----- On the 22nd of September they formed their junction at Tamames, which is about three leagues distant from Rodrigo. Their united force amounted to sixty thousand men, including six thousand horse; ours to not quite fifty thousand, including the force necessary to observe the garrison. We could not, therefore—taking it for granted, as a matter of course, that we wished to maintain the blockade—have brought forty thousand bayonets and sabres into the field, with an inferiority, too, in cavalry of two thousand! This, in a country so well calculated for the operations of that arm, at once decided Lord Wellington, and he raised the blockade on the 24th.