At four o’clock the explosion of a barrel of powder gave the signal for the assault; the artillery opened a heavy fire, and the British advanced. After a short resistance, the French ran back to the covered way, followed by the Royal Irish, who pursued them into a ravelin, where a captain and sixty men fought gallantly till nearly all were disabled. The survivors rushed towards a small wooden bridge, spanning a wet ditch eight or ten feet deep and a hundred feet in width. The end of this bridge was made of loose planks; and had the French done their duty when they crossed it, they would have tossed these planks into the ditch, and thus made a death-trap, into which the leading British soldiers as they followed them would have been thrust by their comrades in rear. But in their panic the French forgot to take this precaution; the XVIIIth got safely across, and chased the enemy to the foot of the wall of the main fortification. The men were wild with delight at their success, but the senior officers realised that the situation was a desperate one: a few hundred British troops were entangled among the unbreached works of a fort, whose garrison, though undoubtedly surprised, had suffered but little in the attack. To retire was out of the question, but to scale the wall looming high and grim above them appeared impossible, until the fugitives, whom the soldiers were chasing with their bayonets, solved the problem by darting to a part of the wall where much grass grew, and hauling themselves up from tuft to tuft. Where a Frenchman could climb an Irishman could follow, and after a desperate scramble, the red-coats began to mount the ramparts, when the enemy, utterly confounded by the unconventionality of the assault, hastily retired into the body of the fort, threw down their arms, and begged for quarter. Their lives were spared, and the booty given to the troops. This capture cost the British two hundred and ninety-seven killed and wounded.[27] The casualties among the XVIIIth are not recorded. Two days later the siege came to an end in a very curious way. To celebrate a recent victory in another part of Europe, the Allies paraded all their troops and marched close up to the town to fire a _feu-de-joie_ into it with shotted guns and muskets. The inhabitants had suffered much from the bombardment, especially since the cannon of Fort St Michael had been turned against them, and when they saw the movement, feared that the walls were going to be stormed forthwith; some rushed to the Governor to urge him to surrender, while others flocked to the ramparts with white cloths in their hands, crying “Mercy, Mercy, Quarter, Quarter.” The Governor asked to be allowed to capitulate, and, says Parker, “as we had other sieges to carry on this season, the Prince allowed them honourable terms.”