As the former system of attack against Cristoval and the castle, was now impracticable, lord Wellington desired to assail one of the western fronts which would have been a scientific operation; but the engineer represented that he had neither mortars nor miners, nor enough of guns, nor the means of bringing up sufficient stores for such an attack. Indeed the want of transport had again obliged the allies to draw the stores from Elvas, to the manifest hazard of that fortress, and hence, here, as at Ciudad Rodrigo, time was necessarily paid for, by the loss of life; or rather the crimes of politicians were atoned for by the blood of the soldiers. The plan finally fixed upon, was to attack the bastion of Trinidad, because, the counter-guard there being unfinished, that bastion could be battered from the hill on which the Picurina stood. The first parallel was therefore to embrace the Picurina, the San Roque, and the eastern front, in such a manner that the counter-batteries there erected, might rake and destroy all the defences of the southern fronts which bore against the Picurina hill. The Picurina itself was to be battered and stormed, and from thence the Trinidad and Santa Maria bastions, were to be breached; after this all the guns were to be turned against the connecting curtain, which was known to be of weak masonry, that a third breach might be made, and a storming party employed to turn any retrenchments behind the breaches in the bastions. In this way the inundation could be avoided, and although a French deserter declared, and truly, that the ditch was there eighteen feet deep, such was the general’s confidence in his troops, and in his own resources for aiding their efforts, that he resolved to storm the place without blowing in the counterscarp. The battering train, directed by major Dickson, consisted of fifty-two pieces. This included sixteen twenty-four-pound howitzers, for throwing Shrapnel shells, but this species of missile, much talked of in the army at the time, was little prized by lord Wellington, who had early detected its insufficiency, save as a common shell; and partly to avoid expense, partly from a dislike to injure the inhabitants, neither in this, nor in any former siege, did he use mortars. Here indeed he could not have brought them up, for besides the neglect of the Portuguese government, the peasantry and even the ordenança employed to move the battering train from Alcacer do Sal, although well paid, deserted. Of nine hundred gunners present, three hundred were British, the rest Portuguese, and there were one hundred and fifty sappers volunteers from the third division, who were indeed rather unskilful, but of signal bravery. The engineer’s parc was established behind the heights of St. Michael, and the direction of the siege was given to general Picton. General Kempt, general Colville, and general Bowes alternately commanded in the trenches.