timber of the best quality, and in abundance, for gates, drawbridges, palisades, and splinter proofs; and the whole was well flanked in every part. The ground to the south, which was toward the bridge, fell by a steep descent: at the bottom was a small stream flowing to the Tormes; and on the opposite bank the convents of San Cayetano and La Merced had been converted with great skill into two redoubts, with well-covered perpendicular escarpes, deep ditches, and casemated counterscarps; they were also full of bomb-proofs, made by supporting a roof horizontally and vertically with strong beams, and covering it with six feet of earth. These works were seen at once to be far more respectable than Lord Wellington had expected to find, his information amounting to little more than that some convents had been fortified. It was necessary to reduce them before the army could advance, but the means of attack had been provided on this inadequate knowledge: they consisted of only four iron eighteen-pounders and four 24-pounder iron howitzers, with an hundred rounds for each. The engineers had only 400 intrenching tools, without any stores; there were present three engineer officers, with nine men of the corps of royal military artificers; and the works were soon found to be even more formidable than they appeared. ♦JUNE 17.♦ The sixth division broke ground before the fort. The left wing of the army moved to Villares de la Reyna, a league in advance of Salamanca; the right and centre bivouacked on the Tormes, near Santa Martha, on the right bank. Lieutenant-Colonel Ponsonby’s brigade followed the retiring enemy, and skirmished with them for two leagues. A battery was erected for breaching the main wall of the fort. It was nearly full moon; little could be done therefore during the first night. An attempt to blow in part of the counterscarp opposite to the intended breach, was frustrated by the vigilance of a dog; and an attempt at mining it failed also, the party being ordered to withdraw in consequence of the loss sustained by a plunging fire from the top of the convent. On the second night two batteries were completed: they opened the following morning, and beat down part of the wall; but the enemy’s musketry fired with great effect from loopholes in the upper windows, and their fire was more than ordinarily destructive, because of the large openings of the embrasures which were necessary for such short pieces as the howitzers. More ammunition was sent for to Almeida. Early on the third day, the lower part of the convent wall, three feet and a half thick, was pierced through, and at a single shot half the length of that face of the building came down, bringing the roof with it, and laying the interior open: the men were seen firing through the loopholes at the moment of its fall, and they of course were buried in the ruins. Carcasses were then fired into the convent, to set it on fire, but the enemy’s precautions prevented them from taking effect.