a letter to him afterwards, with the significant observation that he might probably repent having thus cut himself off from the only means of communication which ♦THE BOMBARDMENT BEGINS.♦ were allowed in war. It was on the 12th of June that the summons was sent, and on the night of the 13th, about an hour after midnight, the bombardment began. Then for the first time the _generale_ or alarm was beat, a sound which afterwards became so frequent in this ♦1809. JUNE.♦ devoted city: roused from their sleep, the aged and the children repaired to cellars and other places of imagined security, which they who could had provided for this emergency, and the female company of St. Barbara hastened to their posts. An ill-judged sally was made early on the 17th against some works which were supposed to be the base of a battery against the Puerto de Francia: it was successful, but the success was of little importance and dearly purchased; many brave men fell, and 110 were brought back wounded. The bombardment continued, and among other buildings the military hospital was destroyed: the people, while it was in flames, observed that its destruction was deserved, for, instead of proving a place of help and healing for the sick, covetousness and peculation had made their profit there upon human misery. The hospitals of St. Domingo and St. Martin were also rendered uninhabitable; one other had been made ready, another was to be prepared, and the difficulty of providing for the sick and wounded increased at the time when their numbers were daily increasing. About the end of the month an epidemic affection of the bowels become prevalent, occasioned partly by the perpetual agitation of mind which the people endured, partly by sleeping in damp subterranean places, where the air never circulated freely, and where many had nothing but the ground to lie on. In July, a bilious fever is usually endemic in Gerona; it seized especially upon the lower classes now, and upon the refugees from those places which had been taken or burned by the enemy; and it affected the wounded also. ♦ST. CYR DRAWS NEARER GERONA.♦