The outward seeming of the Picurina was however fallacious, the fort was very strong; the fronts were well covered by the glacis, the flanks were deep, and the rampart, fourteen feet perpendicular from the bottom of the ditch, was guarded with thick slanting pales above; and from thence to the top there were sixteen feet of an earthen slope. A few palings had, indeed, been knocked off at the covered way, and the parapet was slightly damaged on that side, but this injury was repaired with sand-bags, and the ditch was profound, narrow at the bottom, and flanked by four splinter-proof casemates. Seven guns were mounted on the works, the entrance to which by the rear was protected with three rows of thick paling, the garrison was above two hundred strong, and every man had two muskets. The top of the rampart was garnished with loaded shells to push over, a retrenched guard-house formed a second internal defence, and finally, some small mines and a loop-holed gallery, under the counterscarp, intended to take the assailants in rear, were begun but not finished. Five hundred men of the third division being assembled for the attack, general Kempt ordered two hundred, under major Rudd of the seventy-seventh, to turn the fort on the left; an equal force, under major Shaw of the seventy-fourth, to turn the fort by the right; and one hundred from each of these bodies were directed to enter the communication with San Roque and intercept any succours coming from the town. The flanking columns were to make a joint attack on the fort, and the hundred men remaining, were placed under captain Powis of the eighty-third, to form a reserve. The engineers, Holloway, Stanway, and Gips, with twenty-four sappers bearing hatchets and ladders, guided these columns, and fifty men of the light division, likewise provided with axes, were to move out of the trenches at the moment of attack. ASSAULT OF PICURINA. The night was fine, the arrangements clearly and skilfully made, and about nine o’clock the two flanking bodies moved forward. The distance was short, and the troops quickly closed on the fort, which black and silent before, now seemed one mass of fire; then the assailants running up to the palisades in the rear, with undaunted courage endeavoured to break through, and when the destructive musketry of the French, and the thickness of the pales, rendered their efforts nugatory, they turned against the faces of the work and strove to break in there; but the depth of the ditch and the slanting stakes at the top of the brick-work again baffled them. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. VII. Section 2, Letter C.]