“To avoid the danger of any great explosion, the powder was made as occasion required; and this was the more easily effected, because Zaragoza contained a royal depôt and refinery for saltpetre, and there were powder–mills in the neighbourhood, which furnished workmen familiar with the process of manufacturing that article. The houses and trees beyond the walls were all demolished and cut down, and the materials carried into the town. The public magazines contained six months’ provisions; the convents were well stocked; and the inhabitants had likewise laid up their own stores for several months. General Doyle had also sent a convoy into the town from the side of Catalonia, and there was abundance of money, because, in addition to the resources of the town, the military chest of Castaños’s army, which had been supplied only the night before the battle of Tudela, had been in the flight carried into the town. “Companies of women, enrolled to attend the hospitals, and to carry provisions and ammunition to the combatants, were commanded by the Countess Burita, a lady of an heroic disposition, who is said to have displayed the greatest intelligence and the noblest character during both sieges. There were thirteen engineer officers, and 800 sappers and miners, composed of excavators, formerly employed on the canal, and there were from 1500 to 2000 cannoneers. “The regular troops that fled from Tudela being joined by two small divisions which retreated at the same time from Sanguessa and Caparosa, formed a garrison of 30,000 men, and together with the inhabitants and peasantry presented a mass of 50,000 combatants, who with passions excited almost to frenzy awaited an assault amidst those mighty entrenchments, where each man’s home was a fortress and his family a garrison. To besiege with only 35,000 men a city so prepared was truly a gigantic undertaking.”[33] It was on December 20, 1808, that Marshals Moncey and Mortier appeared in front of the town. We pass over the early part of the siege, which contains nothing to distinguish it from a multitude of others. The French, supported by a powerful battering and mortar train, advanced their trenches slowly towards the town until January 22, when Marshal Lasnes arrived to assume the command. On the 29th four breaches were declared practicable. That night four columns rushed to the assault; one was repulsed, the other three established themselves, and the ramparts of the city became the front line of the French trenches.