The night was fine, the arrangements clearly and skilfully made, and about nine o’clock the two flanking bodies moved forward. The distance was short, and the troops quickly closed on the fort, which, black and silent before, now seemed one mass of fire; then the assailants, running up to the palisades in the rear, endeavoured to break through; and when the destructive musketry of the French and the thickness of the pales rendered their efforts useless, they turned against the faces of the work, and strove to break in there; but the depth of the ditch, and the slanting stakes at the top of the brick-work, baffled them. At this time, the enemy firing incessantly and dangerously, the crisis appeared imminent; and Kempt sent the reserve headlong against the front; thus the fight was continued strongly; the carnage became terrible, and a battalion coming out from the town to succour the fort, was encountered and beaten by the party on the communication. The guns of Badajos and of the castle now opened; the guard of the trenches replied with musketry, rockets were thrown up by the besieged, and the shrill sound of alarm-bells, mixing with the shouts of the combatants, increased the tumult. Still the Picurina sent out streams of 166fire, by the light of which dark figures were seen furiously struggling on the ramparts; for Powis first escaladed the place in front, where the artillery had beaten down the pales; and the other assailants had thrown their ladders on the flanks, in the manner of bridges, from the brink of the ditch to the slanting stakes; and all were fighting hand to hand with the enemy. Meanwhile the axe-men of the light division, compassing the fort like prowling wolves, discovered the gate, and hewing it down broke in by the rear. Yet the struggle continued; Powis, Holloway, Gips, and Oats, of the 88th, fell wounded in or beyond the rampart. Nixon, of the 52nd, was shot, two yards within the gate; Shaw, Rudd, and nearly all the other officers had fallen outside; and it was not until nearly half the garrison were killed, that Gasper Thiery, the commandant, and eighty-six men surrendered, while a few rushing out of the gate endeavoured to cross the bridge and were drowned. This intrepid assault, which lasted an hour, cost four officers and fifty men killed, fifteen officers and two hundred and fifty men wounded; and so vehement was the fight throughout that the garrison either forgot or had not time to roll over the shells and combustibles arranged on the rampart.