The French held their front towards the Barcelona road and the Juslibol, where more kilns and gardens lie at the left of the second of those two ways. Thence the Twelfth had furiously attacked our intrenchments, making their way by the Barcelona road, and challenging with impetuous intrepidity the cross-fires of San Lazarus and that of the place called El Marcelo. Their courage lay in striking audacious blows upon the batteries, and their tenacity produced a veritable hecatomb. They fell in great numbers; the ranks were broken, and, being instantly filled by others, they repeated the attack. At times they almost reached the parapets, and a thousand individual contests increased the horror of the scene. They went in advance of their leaders, brandishing their cutlasses, like desperate men who had made it a question of honor to die before a heap of bricks, and in that frightful destruction which wrenched the life from hundreds of men every minute, they disappeared, flung down upon mother earth, soldiers and sergeants, ensigns, captains, and colonels. It was a veritable struggle between two peoples; and while the fires of the first siege were burning in our hearts, the French came on thirsting for vengeance with all the passion of offended manhood, worse even than the passion of the warrior. It was this untimely bloodthirstiness that lost them the day. They should have begun by demolishing our works with their artillery, observing the serenity which a siege demands, and not have engaged in those hand to hand combats before positions defended by a people like the one that they had met on the fifteenth of July, and the fourth of August. They ought to have repressed their feeling of contempt or scorn of the forces of the enemy,--a feeling that has always been the bad star of the French. It was the same in the war with Spain, as in the recent conflict with Prussia. They ought to have put into execution a calmly considered plan which would have produced in the besieged less of disgust than exaltation. It is certain that if they carried with them the thought of their immortal general who always conquered as much by his admirable logic as by his cannons, they would have employed in the siege of Saragossa a little of the knowledge of the human heart, without which the pursuit of war, brutal war--it seems a lie!--is no more than cruel carnage. Napoleon, with his extraordinary penetration, would have comprehended the Saragossan character, and would have abstained from attacking the unprotected columns, whose boast was of individual personal valor. This is a quality at all times difficult and dangerous to encounter, but above all in the presence of nations who fight for an ideal and not for an idol.