Meantime, on the Plaza Miserere, General Whitelock, surrounded by his staff, walked to and fro, knowing nothing of what had happened, hearing from far off the shouts and cries of the combatants, the incessant rattling of musketry, the frequent boom of cannon. Of those troops who had disappeared in the murky dawn into that great wilderness of houses, not one returned to tell how their comrades fared. The firing was far off on the eastern face of the city to the north and to the south of the Plaza Mayor. Between these points and the Plaza Miserere there intervened a vast mass of flat-roofed houses, which swarmed with armed men. No messenger could penetrate that wilderness. One officer, who was sent off to the right with a few dragoons, returned, saying that to pass onwards was impossible. The troops of the reserve were all under arms, and surrounded by swarms of native cavalry, who now and then crept near enough to fire upon them, and who watched for an opportunity of pouncing upon any weak party which might venture away from the main body. One party of this cavalry, about 200 men, approached so near that Lieutenant-colonel Torrens, chief of the staff to General Whitelock, was apprehensive of danger from them. Taking with him thirty dragoons, he charged them, drove them before him, and pursued them for nearly a league. Then about eight o'clock General Whitelock determined upon a further offensive movement upon the centre. Two detachments were ordered upon this service. Three companies of infantry with two field-pieces advanced by the street now known as the Calle Piedad, and a corps composed of the 6th Carabineers and two troops of the 9th Light Dragoons, dismounted, under the command of Colonel Kington of the Carabineers, with Major Pigot of the Dragoons as his second in command, was ordered to penetrate by the next street to the right. This corps had also two field-pieces attached to it. The carabineers were armed with carbines and bayonets, the dragoons had muskets. The infantry, galled by a heavy fire from the azoteas, forced their way as far as the church of San Miguel, and bursting open the church doors and the doors of several of the adjacent houses established themselves there, filling the tower of the church with marksmen, whose fire soon drove away the enemy from the neighbouring azoteas. The two field-pieces were planted in the street in front of the church and by their fire drove off a party of the enemy who were advancing upon them up to Calle Piedad. * * * * *