Granted that a siege artfully conducted and with sufficient means must reduce the fortress attacked; still there will be some opportunity for a governor to display his resources of mind. Vauban admits of one assault and several retrenchments, after a lodgment is made on the body of the place; Napoleon only insisted that every effort which courage and genius could dictate should be exhausted before a surrender, and those efforts can never be defined or bounded before-hand. Tarifa is a happy example. To be consistent, any attack which deviates from the rules of art must also be denounced as barbarous; yet how seldom has a general all the necessary means at his disposal. In Spain not one siege could be conducted by the British army according to the rules. And there is a manifest weakness in praising the Spanish defence of Zaragoza, and condemning Napoleon because he demanded from regular troops a devotion similar to that displayed by peasants and artizans. What governor was ever in a more desperate situation than general Bizanet at Bergen-op-Zoom, when sir Thomas Graham, with a hardihood and daring which would alone place him amongst the foremost men of enterprize which Europe can boast of, threw more than two thousand men upon the ramparts of that almost impregnable fortress. The young soldiers of the garrison frightened by a surprise in the night, were dispersed, were flying. The assailants had possession of the walls for several hours, yet some cool and brave officers rallying the men towards morning, charged up the narrow ramps and drove the assailants over the parapets into the ditch. They who could not at first defend their works were now able to retake them, and so completely successful and illustrative of Napoleon’s principle was this counter-attack that the number of prisoners equalled that of the garrison. There are no rules to limit energy and genius, and no man knew better than Napoleon how to call those qualities forth; he possessed them himself in the utmost perfection and created them in others. CHAPTER II. STORMING OF SAN SEBASTIAN. [Sidenote: 1813. August.]