In the night a new battery against San Roque being armed, two officers with some sappers glided behind that outwork, gagged the sentinel, placed powder-barrels and a match against the dam of the inundation and retired undiscovered. The explosion did not destroy the dam, the inundation remained and the sap made no progress, because of the French musketeers; for though the besiegers’ marksmen slew many, reinforcements were sent across the inundation by means of a raft with parapets, and men also passed unseen behind the cloth communication, from the Trinidad. But the crisis of the siege was now approaching rapidly. The breaches were nearly practicable, Soult had effected his junction with Drouet and Daricau; and Wellington, who had not sufficient force to assault the place and give battle at the same time, resolved to leave two divisions in the trenches and fight at Albuera. In this view Graham fell back towards that place, and Hill, destroying the bridge at Merida, marched to Talavera Real. Time was now, as in war it always is, a great object, and the anxiety on both sides redoubled. Soult was however still at Llerena when, the breaches being declared practicable, the assault was ordered for that evening, and Leith’s division recalled to the siege; yet a careful personal examination caused Wellington to doubt, and he delayed the storm, until a third breach, as originally projected, should be formed in the curtain between Trinidad and Maria. This could not be commenced before morning, and during the night the French workmen laboured assiduously at their retrenchments, despite of the showers of grape with which the batteries scoured the ditch and the breach. On the 6th all the batteries were turned against the curtain, the bad masonry crumbled rapidly away, in two hours a yawning breach appeared and Wellington renewed his order for the assault. Eagerly then the soldiers got ready for a combat, so fiercely fought, so terribly won, so dreadful in all its circumstances, that posterity can scarcely be expected to credit the tale: but many are still alive who know that it is true. Wellington spared Phillipon the affront of a summons, and seeing the breach strongly intrenched, the flank fire still powerful, he would not in that dread crisis trust his fortune to a single effort. Eighteen thousand daring soldiers burned for the signal of attack, he was unwilling to lose the service of any, and therefore to each division gave a task such as few generals would have the hardihood even to contemplate. On the right, Picton’s division was to file out of the trenches, cross the Rivillas, and scale the castle walls, from eighteen to twenty-four feet high, furnished with all means of destruction, and so narrow at top that the defenders could easily reach and as easily overturn the ladders.