Lord Wellington came over from Lesaca on the same day about noon, and determined upon renewing the attack; the second breach was to be completed, the demi-bastion thrown down, and fresh troops appointed for another assault. But the ammunition was now running low; and upon his return that night he received intelligence of movements on the enemy’s part in the Pyrenees, which made him forthwith dispatch orders for withdrawing the guns from the batteries and converting the siege into a blockade. ♦SOULT APPOINTED COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.♦ Marshal Soult had been sent back from Germany as Lieutenant of the Emperor, and Commander-in-chief of the French armies in Spain. Of all the French Generals employed in the Peninsula, he had obtained the highest reputation; and undoubtedly no one could be better entitled to the praise of those authors who write history, with a mere military feeling, reckless of all higher considerations. That _impassibility_ which he considered as one of the first essentials for a general in such a war, and of which proof had been given in his proclamations and his acts, recommended him to Buonaparte not less than his great ability. The remains of the armies of Portugal, of the centre and of the north, were united; their ranks, which had so often been thinned, were filled by a new conscription; and the whole being re-formed into nine divisions of infantry, was called the army of Spain; the right, centre, and left, were under Generals Reille, Drouet, Compte d’Erlon, and Clausel; the reserve, under General Villatte: there were two divisions of dragoons under Generals Treillard and Tilly, and a light division under General Pierre Soult. In the expectation of success every exertion had been used to increase the strength of their cavalry, though of little use in the Pyrenees, that the war might be once more carried beyond the Ebro; and with the same view a large proportion of artillery was provided. The decree which appointed Marshal Soult bore date on the first of July; he took the command on the 13th, and his preparations were forwarded with the ability, activity, and hopefulness by which the French are characterized in such ♦HIS ADDRESS TO THE TROOPS.♦ things. He issued an address to his troops, containing more truth than was usually admitted into a French state paper, because the truth in that place could not possibly be concealed; but it was sufficiently coloured with artful misrepresentations and with falsehood. “The armies of France,” it said, “guided by the powerful and commanding genius of the Emperor Napoleon, had achieved in Germany a succession of victories as brilliant as any that adorned their annals. The presumptuous hopes of the enemy had thus been confounded; and the Emperor, who was always inclined to consult the welfare of his subjects, by following moderate counsels, had listened to the pacific overtures which the enemy made to him after their defeat. But