For about six months previously to the termination of hostilities, the siege had been carried on with fearful vigour, and the destruction it occasioned, revealed to a mournful extent the efficiency of the enemy’s cannonade. The tiers of batteries on the north front, the whole of the fortifications along the sea face, and indeed every work of a permanent character, were considerably damaged or thrown down. The town too was little better than a vast ruin, and its houses were levelled to the rock, or were left standing in tottering fragments, or at best in their shells, despoiled and untenanted, as so many monuments of an unbounded calamity. The inhabitants, driven shelterless into the streets, were compelled either to leave the fortress, or to locate themselves under canvas amid the general desolation; or to seek a comfortless retreat in the dark and gloomy caverns of the rock. Such was the wreck to which Gibraltar was reduced at the close of the siege, and the work of restoration, therefore, was both extensive and pressing. The reconstruction or repair of the fortifications and other public works at the fortress, in great part depended upon the company; and the more so, since the numbers of the line competent to work as tradesmen were inconsiderable. Assistance from the civil population of the place was neither given nor expected, as the works in the town secured to them abundance of employment and excellent wages. Policy, therefore, dictated the expediency of paying particular regard both to the numerical and physical efficiency of the company. At the close of the siege, there were twenty-nine rank and file wanting to complete the soldier-artificers, which number was increased to thirty-nine by the end of May. To supply this deficiency, the Governor ordered the transfer of an equal number of artificers from regiments in the garrison; and on the 31st July, the company was complete. Still, there were many of the men who, from wounds received at the siege, or from privation and hardship, or from exposure in camp, in summer, to the excessive heat of the sun, and in the autumn, to the heavy rains, were unequal to the exertion required from them on the works. Among them were the best masons and carpenters of the company, who were stated to have been “expended” during the siege. Accordingly, on the 31st of August, sixty-seven men, good “old servants, and those that had lost the use of their limbs in the service,” were discharged and “recommended,” whose vacancies were at once filled up by volunteers from the line. After this desirable pruning, the composition of the company stood as under:—