This attack was very daring. It was a forlorn hope, under accumulated dangers; almost all the troops had retired[28], and, a few moments before, a great alarm was excited by a cry from the heaps of wounded, that the French were descending into the ditch. To exaggerate the picture of this sanguinary strife is impossible:—the small groups of soldiers seeking shelter from the cart-wheels, pieces of timber, fire-balls, and other missiles hurled down upon them; the wounded crawling past the fire-balls, many of them scorched and perfectly black, and covered with mud, from having fallen into the _lunette_, where three hundred soldiers were suffocated or drowned; and all this time the French on the top of the parapets, jeering and cracking their jokes, and deliberately picking off whom they chose. The troops lining the glacis could not fire sufficiently, as they were terribly exposed, and could scarcely live from the cross fire of grape-shot. Colonel Barnard[29] did all in his power to concentrate the different attacks. It was in vain; the difficulties were too great. But Badajoz was not the grave of the light division's valour, nor of the fourth division's either. Philippon, the governor, a _Frenchman_, and our enemy, gave the full particulars of this affair to a friend of mine, while travelling in England; he said that he thought the great explosion would have finished the business, but he was astonished at the resolution of the British troops, who, he said, were fine fellows, and deserved a better fate. The single musket-shot, fired just as the "forlorn hope" descended the ditch, was a signal of their approach, which shows how determined the French were to have a good blow-up, for not a ball was fired before the explosion. The efforts of the garrison to preserve the place did them much honour. Philippon was determined not to do as the governor of Ciudad Rodrigo had done. Had not the Earl of Wellington planned the two extreme attacks by escalade, on the castle, by the third division, and on the south side of the town by part of the fifth division, and on the Fort Pardalaras by the Portuguese, the result might have been very serious. The Duke of Dalmatia was within a few leagues, and opposite Generals Hill[30] and Graham[31]. The Duke of Ragusa had pushed his advanced dragoons as far as the Bridge of Boats at Villa Velha, and at length got entangled in the labyrinths of Portugal. I have heard and read of sitting down before a town, _opening trenches, blowing up the counterscarp, and all according to rule; but this was a crisis_, time was precious, added to which the Guadiana ran in our rear, and the pontoon bridge had been carried away once during the siege, by the swelling of the river.