Villatte’s demonstration against Longa on the 28th of July had caused the ships laden with the battering train to put to sea, but on the 5th of August the guns were re-landed and the works against the fortress resumed. On the 8th, a notion having spread that the enemy was mining under the cask redoubt, the engineers seized the occasion to exercise their inexperienced miners by sinking a shaft and driving a gallery. The men soon acquired expertness, and as the water rose in the shaft at twelve feet, the work was discontinued when the gallery had attained eighty feet. Meanwhile the old trenches were repaired, the heights of San Bartolomeo were strengthened, and the convent of Antigua, built on a rock to the left of those heights, was fortified and armed with two guns to scour the open beach and sweep the bay. The siege however languished for want of ammunition; and during this forced inactivity the garrison received supplies and reinforcements by sea, their damaged works were repaired, new defences constructed, the magazines filled, and sixty-seven pieces of artillery put in a condition to play. Eight hundred and fifty men had been killed and wounded since the commencement of the attack in July, but as fresh men came by sea, more than two thousand six hundred good soldiers were still present under arms. And to show that their confidence was unabated they celebrated the Emperor’s birthday by crowning the castle with a splendid illumination; encircling it with a fiery legend to his honour in characters so large as to be distinctly read by the besiegers. On the 19th of August, that is to say after a delay of sixteen days, the battering train arrived from England, and in the night of the 22d fifteen heavy pieces were placed in battery, eight at the right attack and seven at the left. A second battering train came on the 23d, augmenting the number of pieces of various kinds to a hundred and seventeen, including a large Spanish mortar; but with characteristic negligence this enormous armament had been sent out from England with no more shot and shells than would suffice for one day’s consumption! In the night of the 23d the batteries on the Chofre sand-hills were reinforced with four long pieces and four sixty-eight pound carronades, and the left attack with six additional guns. Ninety sappers and miners had come with the train from England, the seamen under Mr. O’Reilly were again attached to the batteries, and part of the field artillerymen were brought to the siege.