Now that the city was open to the invaders, the contest was to be carried on once more in the streets and houses. But the French had been taught by experience that in such domestic warfare the Zaragozans derived a superiority from the feeling and principle which inspired them, and the cause wherein they were engaged. They had learned that the only means of conquering it was to destroy it house by house, and street by street; and upon this system of destruction they proceeded. Three companies of miners and eight of sappers carried on this subterranean war. The Spaniards had officers who could have opposed them with not inferior skill; but men were wanting, and the art of sapping and mining is not one which can be learned on the spot where it is wanted; their attempts therefore were frequently discovered, and the men suffocated in their own works. Nor indeed had they been more expert could powder have been supplied for their consumption. The stock with which the Zaragozans began had been exhausted; they had none but what they manufactured day by day, and no other cannon-balls than those which had been fired against them, and which they collected and fired back upon the enemy. ♦PROGRESS OF THE PESTILENCE.♦ The Zaragozans expected miracles for their deliverance; and they exerted themselves so excellently well, that the French, with all their advantages, would have found themselves unequal to the enterprise in which they were engaged, and other armies must have been brought up to supply more thousands for the slaughter, if the defenders had not been suffering under an evil which in their circumstances it was equally impossible to prevent or to alleviate. The consequences of that evil, when it had once appeared, were but too surely to be apprehended; and in bitter anticipation, yet while a hope ♦MIRALLES, ELOGIO DE ZARAGOZA, P. 42.♦ remained, an Aragoneze exclaimed, Zaragoza surrenders not, if God is neutral! If the seasons had only held their ordinary course, this heroic people might a second time have delivered themselves. In that part of Spain January is commonly a wet month. Had the rains fallen as usual, the enemy would hardly have been able to complete their approaches; had the weather, on the contrary, been severe, it might have stopped the contagion, and then the city would have had hands as well as hearts for its defence. But the season proved at once dry enough for the ground to be in the most favourable state for the besiegers’ operations, and mild enough to increase the progress of the disease, which was now more destructive than the enemy, though no enemy ever employed the ♦CAVALLERO, 71.♦ means of destruction with less remorse. When once the pestilence had begun it was impossible to check its progress, or confine it to one quarter of the city. It was not long before more than thirty hospitals were established; ... as soon as one was destroyed by the bombardment the patients were removed to some