Thus passed the day of the tenth with no advantage for the besiegers from us, even if they had succeeded in getting near San José and opening a wide breach, which, together with the ruined condition of the building, forced the unhappy necessity of its surrender. Yet, in the mean time, the fortress had not been reduced to powder, and, dead or alive, its defenders had hope. Fresh troops were sent there, because the battalions working there since morning were decimated; and when night fell, after the opening of the breach and the fruitless attempt at an assault, yet Renovales held the blood-soaked ruins, among the heaps of corpses, with only the third part of his artillery. When night interrupted the firing, there had been great carnage on both sides. We ourselves had lost many by death, and more were wounded. The wounded were carried at the time into the city by the friars and the women; but the dead still gave their last service with their cold bodies, for they were stoically thrown into the open breach, which was being stopped up with sacks of wool and earth. During the night we did not rest for one single moment, and the dawn of the eleventh found us inspired by the same frenzy, our pieces already pointed against the enemy's intrenchments, and already piercing with musket shots those who were coming to flank us, without hindering for a moment the work of stopping up the breach, which was widening, hour by hour its dreadful spaces. So we endured all the morning until the moment when they began the assault upon San José, now converted into a heap of ruins, and with most of its garrison dead. Centring the forces upon these two points, they fell upon the convent, and directed an audacious movement upon us; and it was with the object of making our breach practicable that they advanced by the Torrero road with two cannons protected by a column of infantry.