This could not last long; and Tio Garces presently fell, screaming hoarsely, pierced by a hundred balls. The French, who had poured up by way of the sacristy, now advanced in a closed column, and in the three steps which separated the presbytery from the rest of the church, offered us a wall-like defence. When this column fired, the question of the pulpit was instantly settled, and having lost one out of every five of our men, leaving a large number of our dead upon the tiles of the floor, we retreated to the chapels. The first defenders of the pulpit, those who had gone to reinforce them, and Tio Garces also, were picked up on bayonets, pierced through and tossed over the redoubt. So died that great patriot unnamed in history. The captain of our company remained lifeless also upon the pavement. We retired in disorderly fashion to various points separated from one another, not knowing who would command us. Indeed, the initiative of each one, or of each group of two or three, was the only organization then possible, and no one thought of companies or of military rank. All were obedient to one common purpose, and showed a marvellous instinctive knowledge of rudimentary strategy which the exigencies of the struggle demanded at every moment. This instinctive insight made us understand that we were lost from the time that we got into the chapels on the right, and it was rashness to persist in the defence of the church before the great numbers of the French who now occupied it. Some of our soldiers thought that with the benches, the images, and the wood of an old altar-piece, which could easily be broken to pieces, we ought to raise a barricade in the arch of our chapel, and defend ourselves to the last; but two Augustine fathers opposed this useless effort. "My sons, do not trouble yourselves to prolong the resistance which will only destroy you, and give our side no advantage," said one of them. "The French are attacking this moment by the Calle de las Arcades. Hasten there, and see if you can not harass them; but do not imagine that you can defend the church profaned by these savages." These exhortations decided us to leave the church. Some of the Estremadura men remained in the choir, exchanging shots with the French, who now filled the nave. The friars only half-fulfilled their promise of giving us something for which to sing "_Gaudeamus_." As a recompense for having defended their church to the last extreme, they were giving us some bits of jerked beef and dry bread, without our seeing or smelling the wine anywhere, in spite of our straining our eyes and our nostrils. But to explain this, they said that the French, occupying all the upper part, had possession of all the principal storehouse of provisions. Lamenting this, they tried to console us with praises of our good behavior.