On the 7th the besiegers were so close to the wall that the howitzers above could not play without danger to the workmen, and two French field-pieces taken in the horn-work were substituted. The breaching battery on San Michael being amended renewed its fire and at five o’clock had beaten down fifty feet from the parapet of the second line, yet the enemy’s return was heavy and another eighteen-pounder lost a trunnion. In the night block-carriages with supports for the broken trunnions were provided, and the disabled guns again fired with low charges; but rain now filled the trenches, the communications were injured, the workmen negligent, the approaches to the second line went on slowly, and again Dubreton came thundering down from the upper ground, driving the guards and workmen from the new parallel at the lodgements, levelling all the works, carrying off all the tools, and killing or wounding two hundred men. Colonel Cocks, promoted for his gallant conduct at the storming of San Michael, restored the fight and repulsed the French, but fell dead on the ground recovered: he was a young man of a modest demeanour, brave, thoughtful and enterprising: he lived and died a good soldier. After this severe check the approaches to the second line were abandoned, the trenches were extended to embrace the whole of the front attacked, and as the battery on San Michael had now formed a practicable breach twenty-five feet wide the parallel was prolonged towards it, and a trench was opened for marksmen at thirty yards’ distance. Nevertheless another assault could not be risked, because the powder was nearly exhausted and the troops, if unsuccessful, would have been without ammunition in front of the French army, then gathering head near Briviesca. Heated shot were however thrown at the White Church to burn the magazines, and the miners were directed to drive a gallery on the other side of the castle against the church of San Roman, a building occupied by the French beyond their line. On the 10th a supply of ammunition arrived from Santander, but Dubreton had meanwhile strengthened his works, and isolated the new breach on one flank by a stockade, extending at right angles from the second to the third line of defence. The fire from the Napoleon battery then compelled the besiegers again to withdraw their guns within the horn-work, and the attempt to burn the White Church was relinquished, yet the gallery against San Roman was continued. On the 15th the battery in the horn-work was rearmed against the Napoleon battery, but was silenced in three-quarters of an hour. The embrasures were then altered, that the guns might bear on the breach in the second line, and the besiegers worked to repair the mischief done by rain, and to push the gallery under San Roman, where the mine was loaded with nine hundred pounds of powder.