On the 12th the light division resumed work, and the riflemen during a thick fog digged pits for themselves in front of the trenches, from whence they picked off the enemy’s gunners; yet the weather was so cold and the besieged shot so briskly little progress was made. The 13th, the same causes impeded the labourers of the first division. The scarcity of transport also baulked the operations, for one third only of the native carts arrived, the drivers were very indolent, most of the twenty-four pound ammunition was still at Villa de Ponte, and intelligence arrived that Marmont was preparing to succour the place. Wellington, thus pressed, decided to open a breach with his counter-batteries, which were only six hundred yards from the curtain, and then storm without blowing in the counterscarp: in other words, to overstep the rules of science and sacrifice life rather than time, for the capricious Agueda might in one night flood and enable a small French force to relieve the place. The whole army was now brought up and posted in villages on the Coa, ready to cross the Agueda and give battle. Hill also sent a division across the Tagus, lest Marmont, despairing to save Rodrigo, should fall on the communications by Castello Branco and Villa Velha. In the night of the 13th the batteries were armed with twenty-eight guns, the approaches were continued by the flying sap, and the Santa Cruz convent was surprised by the Germans of the first division, which secured the right flank of the trenches. On the 14th the enemy, who had observed that the men in the trenches, when relieved, went off in a disorderly manner, made a sally and overturned the gabions of the sap; they even penetrated to the parallel, and were upon the point of entering the batteries, when a few workmen getting together checked them until a support arrived. The guns were thus saved, but this sally, the death of the engineer on duty, and the heavy fire from the town, delayed the opening of the breaching-batteries. However, at half-past four in the evening twenty-five heavy guns battered the fausse-braye and ramparts, while two pieces smote the convent of Francisco. Then was beheld a spectacle fearful and sublime. For the French replied with more than fifty pieces, and the bellowing of eighty large guns shook the ground far and wide; the smoke rested in heavy volumes upon the battlements of the place, or curled in light wreaths about the numerous spires, and the shells hissing through the air seemed fiery serpents leaping from the darkness; the walls crashed to the stroke of the bullet, and the distant mountains, faintly returning the sound, appeared to moan over the falling city. When night put an end to this turmoil, the quick clatter of musketry was heard like the pattering of hail after a peal of thunder, for the 40th Regiment assaulted and carried the convent of Francisco, and established itself in the suburb on the left of the attack.