animals gnawed the hair from each other’s bodies. The stores of the citizens were now exhausted, and the food for the hospitals was sometimes seized on the way, by the famishing populace. Provisions were prepared in the French camp, and held out to the garrison as a temptation to desert; and yet, during the whole siege, only ten so deserted. At length, human nature could endure no more. The chief surgeon presented to Alvarez a report on the state of the city. It was, indeed, a fearful one. It stated that “not a single house remained in a habitable state” in Gerona. The people slept in cellars, and vaults, and holes, amid the ruins; and the wounded were often killed in the hospital by the enemy’s fire. The streets were broken up, so that the rain-water and sewers had stagnated, and their pestilential breath was rendered more noxious by the dead bodies which lay perishing in the ruins. The incessant thunder of artillery had affected the atmosphere, and vegetation had stopped. The fruit withered on the trees, and nothing would grow. Within the last three days, says the report, five hundred of the garrison alone have died in the hospitals, and the pestilence is still raging unchecked. “If, by these sacrifices,” say its authors, in conclusion, “deserving forever to be the admiration of history,--and if, by consummating them with the lives of us, who, by the will of Providence, have survived our comrades,--the liberty of our country can be secured, happy shall we be, in the bosom of eternity, and in the memory of all good men, and happy will be our children among their fellow-countrymen.” Alvarez himself could do no more. Yet would he not yield to the enemy; but, being seized with a delirious fever, his successor in command yielded the city on honorable terms, on the 10th of December, the siege having lasted seven months. Alvarez died soon after, and the central junta awarded honors and titles to his family, and exempted the whole city from taxation. The surrender of this devoted city closed the campaign for 1809. The principal events of the campaign of 1810 were the battle of Busaco, in which the English gained the victory, and the retreat of the French Marshal Massena. For four months and a half, Massena had continually followed the retreating forces of Wellington, until now he had retired beyond the lines of Torres Vedras. The English had been engaged on these lines a year, until they had at last rendered them almost impregnable. They consisted of three lines of intrenchments, one within another, extending for nearly thirty miles. On these lines were a hundred and fifty redoubts, and six hundred mounted cannon. Here Massena saw his enemy retire within these lines, and he then knew that his utmost efforts to dislodge him must prove abortive. Besides, Wellington here received reinforcements to his army, which increased it to one hundred and thirty thousand men.