"Two hours spent in these vain efforts convinced the soldiers that the breach of the Trinidad was impregnable; and as the opening in the curtain, although less strong, was retired, and the approach to it impeded by deep holes, and cuts made in the ditch, the troops did not much notice it after the partial failure of one attack which had been made early. Gathering in dark groups and leaning on their muskets, they looked up with sullen desperation at the Trinidad, while the enemy stepping out on the ramparts, and aiming their shots by the light of the fire-balls which they threw over, asked, as their victims fell, '_Why they did not come into Badajos?_'" Meanwhile the attack on the west face of the town had succeeded, after one or two attempts, and soldiers of the fifth division were making their way into the empty streets. Wellington, ignorant of this, and perceiving no movement from the castle, the capture of which had been reported to him, ordered the assailants of the breaches to withdraw and re-form for a fresh attack. This however was not necessary: the French, taken in flank both from the castle and from the west, abandoned the defence. The relics of the garrison which had withdrawn to the outlying fort north of the Guadiana surrendered next morning. Over the frightful expenditure of life in this storm, and over the horrors of the sack of Badajos, it is better to draw a veil. Wellington's Peninsular veterans were capable of any deeds of desperate courage, or of steady endurance, but they were also capable of great atrocities on the rare occasions when their officers lost control over them. The Spaniards, to whom Ciudad Rodrigo had been handed over, had so grossly neglected the duty of repairing the fortifications, and the Portuguese government was so dilatory, to use no stronger word, in supplying all four fortresses, that Wellington's plan for invading Andalusia, to fight Soult there, was necessarily abandoned. The defensive side of his duty was obviously the essential one. Still he had it now in his power to choose his own route and his own time for entrance into Spain: and he utilised the interval to render the communications of the French circuitous and difficult. Soult's bridge train having been captured in Badajos, a stroke of good fortune which matched the capture of Marmont's siege train in Ciudad Rodrigo, they could only cross the Tagus at permanent bridges. The lowest bridge on the Tagus, a boat bridge protected by three small forts, was at Almaraz; and General Hill by a brilliant dash seized the forts and destroyed the bridge. Almost simultaneously the bridge over the Tagus at Alcantara, down in Portugal, was skilfully repaired. The combined result of the two operations was to make the communication between Hill, who was left to watch the Guadiana, and Wellington when he moved to the Douro region, a fortnight shorter than the distance between Marmont and Soult's northernmost division. [Illustration: _Map XIV._