The enemy had cleared away the rubbish some feet from a _round tower_, nearly in the centre, and on the crest of the great breach, which they maintained, and it was from this apparently trifling and _unbreached spot_ that the troops sustained their principal loss—standing up to their knees in rubbish, and losing their lives without any probability of success. As the French, however, could not well fire on their left flank without hanging over the parapet, our soldiers were enabled to keep their station on the slope of the breach, at the expense of a great number of officers and men. Had the enemy been able to flank the slope of the breach, all the troops must have been annihilated. The slaughter, however, was so great, as to cause the most serious apprehension, and the wounded and dying were suffering dreadfully, and languishing in the most horrible torments, for want of water, without being again able to regain the trenches, owing to the cross-fire of musketry through which they had to run the gauntlet while advancing to the assault. With the exception of the guns in the castle, the enemy hardly fired any artillery from the walls, either from their being principally dismounted, or that they were unable to depress them sufficiently to do much execution. At this time hardly a word escaped the lips of the astonished spectators; and many of the women were drowned in tears at so doleful a spectacle. At twelve o'clock General Graham, seeing affairs in this desperate state, ordered the guns from the batteries to open, to oblige the enemy to keep down, and to shield the troops for a short time, from their fatal bullets, and to give them a little breathing time, so as to enable the wounded who could yet walk to regain the trenches. The fire from the batteries was terrific, and the troops retired four or five yards down the slope of the breach, while the heavy shot passed over their heads, skimming the round tower, the ramparts and the crest of the breach with a precision truly astonishing, so that the enemy could not show their heads, or discharge a single firelock. Never was artillery better served, or opened at a more seasonable moment; and without doubt this was one of the principal causes of carrying the day; for indeed, had it not been for this seasonable relief, the troops must have been inevitably sacrificed by piecemeal. The volumes of smoke arose in dense clouds, and the reverberation was amazing. The iron balls rattled into the devoted town, unroofing the houses, knocking up the dust and rubbish, and thundering against the walls with a tremendous crash, as if the ramparts were cracking and every stone broken, and the whole tumbling into a mass of ruins. All the edifices seemed tottering to the very foundations, and it was as though every living creature within were about to be swallowed up in the vortex and buried amid the utter desolation.