The besieged, hoping and expecting each day that the usual falls of rain taking place would render the besiegers’ situation intolerable, continued their fire briskly, and worked counter approaches on to the right of the French attacks: but the season was unusually dry, and a thick fog rising each morning covered the besiegers’ advances and protected their workmen, both from the fire and from the sorties of the Spaniards. The 10th of January, thirty-two pieces of French artillery being mounted and provisioned, the convent of San Joseph and the head of the bridge over the Huerba, were battered in breach, and, at the same time, the town was bombarded. San Joseph was so much injured by this fire that the Spaniards, resolving to evacuate it, withdrew their guns. Nevertheless, two hundred of their men made a vigorous sortie at midnight, and were upon the point of entering one of the French batteries, when they were taken in flank by two guns loaded with grape, and were, finally, driven back, with loss of half their number. The 11th, the besiegers’ batteries continued to play on San Joseph with such success that the breach became practicable, and, at four o’clock in the evening, some companies of infantry, with two field-pieces, attacked by the right, and a column was kept in readiness to assail the front, when this attack should have shaken the defence. Two other companies of chosen men were directed to search for an entrance by the rear, between the fort and the river. The defences of the convent were reduced to a ditch eighteen feet deep, and a covered way which, falling back by both flanks to the Huerba, was then extended along the banks of that river for some distance. A considerable number of men still occupied this covered way: but, when the French field-pieces on the right raked it with a fire of grape, the Spaniards were thrown into confusion, and crossing the bed of the river took shelter in the town. At that moment the front of the convent was assaulted; but, while the depth of the ditch and the Spanish fire checked the impetuosity of the assailants at that point; the chosen companies passed round the works, and finding a small bridge over the ditch crossed it, and entered the convent by the rear. The front was carried by escalade, almost at the same moment, and the few hundred Spaniards that remained were killed or made prisoners. The French, who had suffered but little in this assault, immediately lodged themselves in the convent, raised a rampart along the edge of the Huerba, and commenced batteries against the body of the place and against the works at the head of the upper bridge, from whence, as well as from the town, they were incommoded by the fire that played into the convent.