“A council of war was held by the Spaniards on the 8th, not for the purpose which is too usual in such councils, but that their heroic resolution might be communicated to the people. It was, that in those quarters of the city where the Arragonese still maintained their ground, they should continue to defend themselves with the same firmness: should the enemy at last prevail, they were then to retire over the Ebro into the suburbs, break down the bridge, and defend the suburbs till they perished. When this resolution was made public, it was received with the loudest acclamations. But in every conflict the citizens now gained ground upon the soldiers, winning it inch by inch, till the space occupied by the enemy, which on the day of their entrance was nearly half the city, was reduced gradually to about an eighth part. Meantime intelligence of the events in other parts of Spain was received by the French, all tending to dishearten them. During the night of the 13th, their fire was particularly fierce and destructive: in the morning, the French columns, to the great surprise of the Spaniards, were seen at a distance retreating over the plain, on the road to Pampeluna.”[32] Zaragoza, however, was a place of too much importance long to enjoy in quiet her hard–earned laurels. In the course of the autumn, the French recovered their superiority in Arragon, and had no sooner done so, than they bent their strength to repair the disgrace which their arms had sustained, and overthrow the firmest bulwark of independence in the western provinces of Spain. The inhabitants, aware that their heroic resistance had purchased only a temporary deliverance, employed the intervening time in repairing and improving their external defences, and still more so in preparing to renew to greater advantage that internal conflict, in which experience had shown their real strength to exist.