At the left attack also, a number of houses, bordering on the Cosso being gained, a battery was established that raked that great thoroughfare above ground, while under it six galleries were carried, and six mines loaded to explode at the same moment; but the spirit of the French army was now exhausted; they had laboured and fought without intermission for fifty days; they had crumbled the walls with their bullets, burst the convents with their mines, and carried the breaches with their bayonets,--fighting above and beneath the surface of the earth, they had spared neither fire nor the sword, their bravest men were falling in the obscurity of a subterranean warfare; famine pinched them, and Zaragoza was still unconquered! [Sidenote: Rogniat.] “Before this siege,” they exclaimed, “was it ever heard of, that twenty thousand men should besiege fifty thousand?” Scarcely a fourth of the town was won, and they, themselves, were already exhausted. “We must wait,” they said, “for reinforcements or we shall all perish among their cursed ruins, which will become our own tombs, before we can force the last of these fanatics from the last of their dens.” Marshal Lasnes, unshaken by these murmurs and obstinate to conquer, endeavoured to raise the soldiers’ hopes. He pointed out to them that the losses of the besieged so far exceeded their own, that the Spaniards’ strength would soon be wasted and their courage must sink, and that the fierceness of their defence was already abated,--but if contrary to expectation they should renew the example of Numantia, their utter destruction must quickly ensue from the united effects of battle, misery, and pestilence.