The city stands in a commanding situation on the right bank of the Tormes, a river of considerable magnitude there, which rises near the Sierra de Tablada in Old Castille, and falls into the Douro on the Portuguese frontier, opposite Bemposta. The country round is open, without trees, and with a few villages interspersed, in which the houses are constructed of clay. On the left of the river there are extensive pastures, on the right a wide and unenclosed corn country. The pastures are common, and the arable land occupied after a manner not usual in other parts of Spain: it is cultivated in annual allotments, and reverts to the commonalty after the harvest. ♦THE ALLIES ENTER SALAMANCA.♦ Marmont had apprehended this advance of the allies, and had applied for reinforcements without effect. He showed some cavalry and a small body of infantry in front of the town, and manifested an intention of holding the heights on the south side of the Tormes; but in the evening of the 16th the enemy withdrew over the river, and the allies bivouacked within a league of Salamanca. The French retired from that city during the night, leaving some 800 men in the fortifications which they had constructed there. These works commanded the bridge; the left column of the allied army therefore crossed at the ford of El Campo, a league below the city, the centre and the right at the ford of Santa Martha. The utmost joy was expressed by the inhabitants when the English entered, and women crowded to thank Lord Wellington and bless him for their deliverance. Some aching hearts there were among those who had connected themselves by marriage, or by looser ties, with the enemies of their country, but the general feeling was that of perfect and grateful joy; for though this city had suffered none of the immediate evils of war, its consequences had been severely felt there. During the three years of its captivity the French had demolished thirteen of its convents and twenty-two of its twenty-five colleges; the people had been compelled to labour upon works erected for their own subjugation; and the last act of the enemy before they left the city, was to set fire to such houses as obstructed the defence of their works, ... consisting of a fort and two redoubts. For the same reason they had previously demolished the Convent of St. Augustine, the colleges of Cuenca and ♦SIEGE OF THE FORTS THERE.♦ Oviedo, and the magnificent King’s College. The fort was formed out of the Convent of St. Vicente, a large building in the centre of the angle of the old wall, on a perpendicular cliff over the Tormes. The windows had been built up and loop-holed; on both sides it was connected by lines of works with the old wall. There was a fascine battery in a re-entering angle of the convent, not enclosed by these lines, and this was protected by a loop-holed wall, with a palisade in front. ♦COL. JONES’S SIEGES. 158–9.♦ The demolition of so many substantial edifices supplied