“This important success being followed on the 19th by another fortunate attack on the right bank of the Ebro, and by the devastating explosion of 1600 pounds of powder, the constancy of the besieged was at last shaken. An aide–de–camp of Palafox came forth to demand certain terms, before offered by the Marshal, adding thereto that the garrison should be allowed to join the Spanish armies, and that a certain number of covered carriages should follow them. Lasnes rejected these proposals, and the fire continued; but the hour of surrender was come. Fifty pieces of artillery, on the left bank of the Ebro, laid the houses on the quay in ruins. The church of Our Lady of the Pillar, under whose especial protection the city was supposed to exist, was nearly effaced by the bombardment; and the six mines under the Cosso, loaded with many thousand pounds of powder, were ready for a simultaneous explosion, which would have laid a quarter of the remaining houses in the dust. In fine, war had done its work, and the misery of Zaragoza could no longer be endured. “The bombardment, which had never ceased from the 10th of January, had forced the women and children to take refuge in the vaults, with which the city abounded. There the constant combustion of oil, the closeness of the atmosphere, unusual diet, and fear and restlessness of mind, had combined to produce a pestilence, which soon spread to the garrison. The strong and weak, the daring soldier and the timid child, fell before it alike; and such was the state of the atmosphere, and the disposition to disease, that the slightest wound gangrened and became incurable. In the beginning of February the deaths were from four to five hundred daily; the living were unable to bury the dead, and thousands of carcases scattered about the streets and court–yards, or piled in heaps at the doors of the churches, were left to dissolve in their own corruption, or to be licked up by the flames of the burning houses as the defence became contracted. “The suburb, the greatest part of the walls, and one–fourth of the houses were in the hands of the French; 16,000 shells thrown during the bombardment, and the explosion of 45,000 pounds of powder in the mines, had shaken the city to its foundations, and the bones of more than 40,000 persons of every age and sex bore dreadful testimony to the constancy of the besieged. “Palafox was sick; and of the plebeian chiefs, the most distinguished having been slain in battle, or swept away by the pestilence, the obdurate violence of the remaining leaders was so abated that a fresh junta was formed; and, after a stormy consultation, the majority being for a surrender, a deputation waited on Marshal Lasnes on the 20th of February to negotiate a capitulation.”[35]