On the 27th the French battering-train arrived, and on the 29th the sixteen-pounders opened against the town, and the howitzers against the island. These last did little damage beyond dismounting the gun in the tower of the Gusmans, which was however quickly re-established; but the sixteen-pounders brought the old wall down in such flakes, that in a few hours a wide breach was effected, a little to the left of the portcullis tower, looking from the camp. The place was now exposed both to assault and escalade, but behind the breach the depth to the street was above fourteen feet, the space below was covered with iron window-gratings, having every second bar turned up, the houses there, and behind all points liable to escalade, were completely prepared and garrisoned, and the troops were dispersed all round the ramparts, each regiment having its own quarter assigned. The Spanish and forty-seventh British regiment guarded the breach, and on their right some riflemen prolonged the line. The eighty-seventh regiment occupied the portcullis tower and extended along the rampart to the left. In the night of the 29th the enemy fired salvos of grape on the breach, but the besieged cleared the foot of it between the discharges. The 30th the breaching fire was renewed, the wall was broken for sixty feet, and the whole breach offered an easy ascent, yet the besieged again cleared away the rubbish, and in the night were fast augmenting the defences behind, when a heavy rain filled the bed of the river, and the torrent bringing down, from the French camp, planks, fascines, gabions, and dead bodies, broke the palisades with a shock, bent the portcullis backward, and with the surge of the waters even injured the defences behind the breach: a new passage was thus opened in the wall, yet such was the vigour of the besieged, that the damage was repaired before the morning, and the troops calmly and confidently awaited THE ASSAULT.