A party of Portuguese carrying bags filled with grass were to run with the storming party and throw the bags into the ditch, as the leap was too deep for the men. But the Portuguese hesitated, the tumult of the attack on the great breach suddenly broke on the night, and the forlorn hope went running up, leaped into the ditch a depth of eleven feet, and clambered up the steep slope beyond, while Napier with his stormers came with a run behind them. In the dark for a moment the breach was lost, but found again, and up the steep quarry of broken stone the attack swept. About two-thirds of the way up Napier's arm was smashed by a grape-shot, and he fell. His men, checked for a moment, lifted their muskets to the gap above them, whence the French were firing vehemently, and forgetting their pieces were unloaded, snapped them. "Push on with the bayonet, men!" shouted Napier, as he lay bleeding. The officers leaped to the front, the men with a stern shout followed; they were crushed to a front of not more than three or four. They had to climb without firing a shot in reply up to the muzzles of the French muskets. But nothing could stop the men of the light division. A 24-pounder was placed across the narrow gap in the ramparts; the stormers leaped over it, and the 43rd and 52nd, coming up in sections abreast, followed. The 43rd wheeled to the right towards the great breach, the 52nd to the left, sweeping the ramparts as they went. Meanwhile the other two attacks had broken into the town; but at the great breach the dreadful fight still raged, until the 43rd, coming swiftly along the ramparts, and brushing all opposition aside, took the defence in the rear. The British there had, as a matter of fact, at that exact moment pierced the French defence. The two guns that scourged the breach had wrought deadly havoc amongst the stormers, and a sergeant and two privates of the 88th--Irishmen all, and whose names deserve to be preserved--Brazel, Kelly, and Swan--laid down their firelocks that they might climb more lightly, and, armed only with their bayonets, forced themselves through the embrasure amongst the French gunners. They were furiously attacked, and Swan's arm was hewed off by a sabre stroke; but they stopped the service of the gun, slew five or six of the French gunners, and held the post until the men of the 5th, climbing behind them, broke into the battery. So Ciudad Rodrigo was won, and its governor surrendered his sword to the youthful lieutenant leading the forlorn hope of the light division, who, with smoke-blackened face, torn uniform, and staggering from a dreadful wound, still kept at the head of his men. [Illustration: Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, 1812. From Napier's "Peninsular War."]