"Return instantly," answered the Viceroy, promptly, "collect your men-at-arms,--bid them fight on foot for the honour of Castile--for the safety of the province--for their own lives. Marshal them in two bodies. Let one march, by the Plaza Nueva down to the port, and the other by the Calle de la Cruz to the Lerida gate." "I am sorry to say, the Lerida gate is in the possession of the rebels," replied the officer. "A large body of peasants,[6] well armed and mounted, attacked it and drove in the soldiers half an hour ago. They come from Lerida itself, as we learn by the shouts of the others." "The more need to march on it instantly," replied the Viceroy. "See! The flag is up on the church of the Assumption! Don Francisco is there, with part of the second _tercia_. Divide as I have said--send your brother down with one body to the port--with the other, join Don Francisco, at the church of the Assumption; take the two brass cannon from the Barrio Nuevo, and march upon the gate of Lerida. Drive back the rebels, or die!" The Viceroy's orders were given like lightning, and turning his horse, the officer rode away with equal speed to execute them. I marked him as he dashed through the gates of the arsenal, and a more soldier-like man I never saw. He galloped fast over the drawbridge, and through the second gate, crossed the open space between the arsenal and the houses of the town, and darted up the street by which he had come, when suddenly a flash and some smoke broke from the window of a house as he passed; I saw him reel in the saddle, catch at his horse's mane, and fall headlong to the ground; while the charger, freed from his load, ran wildly up the street, till he was out of sight. The sentinel on the counterscarp had seen the officer's fall, and instantly passed the news to the Viceroy. "Pedro Marona!" cried the Count, promptly:--"Quick! mount, and bear the same orders to Don Antonio Molina. Take the Calle de la Paz. Quick! One way or another, we lose our most precious moments. Don Ferdinando should have seen his corslet was better tempered. However, let half a dozen men be sent out to bring him in, perhaps he may not yet be dead." The gates of the arsenal were thrown open accordingly, and a small party carrying a board to bring home the body issued out; but they had scarcely proceeded half way to the spot where the officer had fallen, when the sound of the tumult, the firing, the cheers, the cries, the screams, mingled in one terrific roar, rolled nearer and nearer. A single soldier then appeared in full flight in the long street on which my eyes were fixed; another followed, and another. A shout louder than all the rest rang up to the sky; and rolling, and rushing, like the billows of a troubled ocean, came pouring down the street a large body of the Castilian soldiery, urged on by an immense mass of armed peasantry, with whom the first rank of the Castilians was mingled.