The besiegers’ army was soon reinforced by General Verdier, with 2500 men, besides some battalions of Portugueze, who, according to the devilish system of Buonaparte’s tyranny, had been forced out of their own country, to be pushed on in the foremost ranks, wherever the first fire of a battery was to be received, a line of bayonets clogged, or a ditch filled, with bodies. They occupied the best positions in the surrounding plain, and, on the 27th, attacked the city and the Torrero; but they were repulsed with the loss of 800 men, six pieces of artillery, and five carts of ammunition. By this time, they had invested nearly half the town. The next morning they renewed the attack at both places; from the city they were again repulsed, losing almost all the cavalry who were engaged. But the Torrero ♦THE TORRERO TAKEN.♦ was lost through the alleged misconduct of an artillery officer, who was charged with having made his men abandon the batteries at the most critical moment. For this he was condemned to run the gauntlet six times, the soldiers beating him with their ramrods, and after this cruelty he was shot. ♦THE FRENCH BOMBARD THE CITY.♦ The French, having now received a train of mortars, howitzers, and twelve-pounders, which were of sufficient calibre against mud walls, kept up a constant fire, and showered down shells and grenades from the Torrero. About twelve hundred were thrown into the town, and there was not one building that was bomb proof within the walls. After a time, the inhabitants placed beams of timber together, endways, against the houses, in a sloping direction, behind which those who were near when a shell fell, might shelter themselves. The enemy continued also to invest the city more closely, while the Aragonese made every effort to strengthen their means of defence. They tore down the awnings from their windows, and formed them into sacks, which they filled with sand, and piled up before the gates, in the form of a battery, digging round it a deep trench. They broke holes for musketry in the walls and intermediate buildings, and stationed cannon where the position was favourable for it. The houses in the environs were destroyed. “Gardens and olive grounds,” says an eye-witness, “that in better times had been the recreation and support of their owners, were cheerfully rooted up by the proprietors themselves, wherever they impeded the defence of the city, or covered the approach of the enemy.” ♦EXERTIONS OF THE WOMEN.♦ Women of all ranks assisted; they formed themselves into companies, some to relieve the wounded, some to carry water, wine, and provisions, to those who defended the gates. The ♦COUNTESS BURITA.♦ Countess Burita instituted a corps for this service; she was young, delicate, and beautiful. In the midst of the most tremendous fire of shot and shells, she was seen coolly attending to those occupations which were now become her duty; nor throughout the whole of a two months’ siege did