The first object of attack was the tower in the Gardens, from which the Moorish garrison kept up a teasing fire on the Spaniards, as they were employed in the construction of the battery, as well as in digging a trench, in that quarter. No sooner were the guns in position than they delivered their fire, with such effect that an opening was speedily made in the flimsy masonry of the fortress. Padilla, to whom the assault was committed, led forward his men gallantly to the breach, where he was met by the defenders with a spirit equal to his own. A fierce combat ensued. It was not a long one; for the foremost assailants were soon reinforced by others, until they overpowered the little garrison by numbers, and such as escaped the sword took refuge in the defences of the town that adjoined the church. Flushed with his success in thus easily carrying the tower, which he garrisoned with a strong body of arquebusiers, Don John now determined to make a regular assault on the town, and from this same quarter of the Gardens, as affording the best point of attack. The execution of the affair he entrusted, as before, to Juan de Padilla and his Italian regiment. The guns were then turned against the rampart and the adjoining buildings. Don John pushed forward the siege with vigour, stimulating the men by his own example, carrying fagots on his shoulders for constructing the trenches, and, in short, performing the labours of a common soldier.[219] By the twenty-fourth of January, practicable breaches had been effected in the ancient wall; and at the appointed signal, Padilla and his veterans moved swiftly forward to the attack. They met with little difficulty from the ditch or from the wall, which, never formidable from its height, now presented more than one opening to the assailants. They experienced as little resistance from the garrison. But they had not penetrated far into the town before the aspect of things changed. Their progress was checked by one of those barricades already mentioned as stretched across the streets, behind which a body of musketeers poured well-directed volleys into the ranks of the Christians. At the same time, from the loopholes in the walls of the buildings, came incessant showers of musket-balls, arrows, stones, and other missiles, which swept the exposed files of the Spaniards, soon covering the streets with the bodies of the slain and the wounded. It was in vain that the assailants stormed the houses, and carried one entrenchment after another. Each house was a separate fortress; and each succeeding barricade, as the ascent became steeper, gave additional advantage to its defenders, by placing them on a greater elevation above their enemy. [Sidenote: FIERCE ASSAULTS.]