The trenches leading from the parallel on the isthmus were now very wide and good, the sap was pushed on the right close to the demi-bastion of the horn-work, and the sea-wall supporting the high road into the town, which had increased the march and cramped the formation of the columns in the first assault, was broken through to give access to the strand and shorten the approach to the breaches. The crisis was at hand and in the night of the 29th a false attack was ordered to make the enemy spring his mines; a desperate service and bravely executed by lieutenant Macadam of the ninth regiment. The order was sudden, no volunteers were demanded, no rewards offered, no means of excitement resorted to; yet such is the inherent bravery of British soldiers, that seventeen men of the royals, the nearest at hand, immediately leaped forth ready and willing to encounter what seemed certain death. With a rapid pace, all the breaching batteries playing hotly at the time, they reached the foot of the breach unperceived, and then mounted in extended order shouting and firing; but the French were too steady to be imposed upon and their musquetry laid the whole party low with the exception of their commander, who returned alone to the trenches. On the 30th the sea-flank of the place being opened from the half-bastion of St. John on the right to the most distant of the old breaches, that is to say, for five hundred feet, the batteries on the Chofres were turned against the castle and other defences of the Monte Orgullo, while the advanced battery on the isthmus, now containing three guns, demolished, in conjunction with the fire from the Chofres, the face of the half-bastion of St. John’s and the end of the high curtain above it. The whole of that quarter was in ruins, and at the same time the batteries on San Bartolomeo broke the face of the demi-bastion of the horn-work and cut away the palisades. The 30th the batteries continued their fire, and about three o’clock lord Wellington after examining the enemy’s defence resolved to make a lodgement on the breach, and in that view ordered the assault to be made the next day at eleven o’clock when the ebb of tide would leave full space between the horn-work and the water. The galleries in front of the advanced battery on the isthmus were now pushed close up to the sea wall, under which three mines were formed with the double view of opening a short and easy way for the troops to reach the strand, and rendering useless any subterranean works the enemy might have made in that part. At two o’clock in the morning of the 31st they were sprung, and opened three wide passages which were immediately connected, and a traverse of gabions, six feet high, was run across the mouth of the main trench on the left, to screen the opening from the grape-shot of the castle. Everything was now ready for the assault, but before describing that terrible event it will be fitting to shew the exact state of the besieged in defence.