The bombardment which had never ceased since the 10th of January, had forced the women and children to take refuge in the vaults, with which the city abounded. There the constant combustion of oil, the closeness of the atmosphere, unusual diet, and fear and restlessness of mind, had combined to produce a pestilence which soon spread to the garrison. The strong and the weak, the daring soldier and the shrinking child fell before it alike, and such was the state of the atmosphere and the predisposition to disease that the slightest wound gangrened and became incurable. In the beginning of February the deaths were from four to five hundred daily; the living were unable to bury the dead, and thousands of carcases, scattered about the streets and court yards, or piled in heaps at the doors of the churches, were left to dissolve in their own corruption, or to be licked up by the flames of the burning houses as the defence became contracted. [Sidenote: Cavalhero. Rogniat. Suchet.] The suburb, the greatest part of the walls, and one-fourth of the houses were in the hands of the French, sixteen thousand shells thrown during the bombardment, and the explosion of forty-five thousand pounds of powder in the mines had shaken the city to its foundations, and the bones of more than forty thousand persons of every age and sex, bore dreadful testimony to the constancy of the besieged. Palafox was sick, and of the plebeian chiefs, the curate of St. Gil, the lemonade seller of the Cosso, and the Tios, Jorge, and Marin, having been slain in battle, or swept away by the pestilence, the obdurate violence of the remaining leaders was so abated, that a fresh junta was formed, and after a stormy consultation, the majority being for a surrender, a deputation waited upon marshal Lasnes on the 20th of February, to negotiate a capitulation. They proposed that the garrison should march out with the honours of war; that the peasantry should not be considered as prisoners; and at the particular request of the clergy, they also demanded that the latter should have their full revenues guaranteed to them, and punctually paid. This article was rejected with indignation, and, according to the French writers, the place surrendered at discretion; but the Spanish writers assert, that Lasnes granted certain terms, drawn up by the deputation at the moment, the name of Ferdinand the 7th being purposely omitted in the instrument, which in substance run thus:-- The garrison to march out with the honours of war; to be constituted prisoners, and marched to France; the officers to retain their swords, baggage, and horses, the men their knapsacks; and persons of either class, wishing to serve Joseph, to be immediately enrolled in his ranks. The peasants to be sent to their homes. Property and religion to be guaranteed.