The defeated divisions retired concentrically, and having soon met, they endeavoured with great energy to reform and renew the action; but the fire of Duncan’s guns, close, rapid, and destructive, rendered the attempt vain. Victor was soon in full retreat; and the British, having been twenty-four hours under arms, were too exhausted to pursue. In this brief but desperate fight upwards of twelve hundred British soldiers, and more than two thousand Frenchmen, were killed or wounded; from the latter, six guns, an eagle, and two generals, both mortally wounded, were taken, together with four hundred other prisoners. 126The activities of this spirited campaign were maintained in other places. Badajos was sorely pressed by the French. Early in March, the second parallel being completed, and the Pardaleras taken into the works, the approaches were carried by sap to the covered way; mines were also prepared to blow in the counterscarp, and yet Rafael Menacho, the governor, was not dismayed. His sallies were frequent and vigorous; he constructed new entrenchments where necessary; and everything went on prosperously till the evening of the 2nd, when in a sally, in which the nearest French batteries were carried, the guns spiked, and trenches partly ruined, Menacho was killed, and the command fell to Imas, a man so unworthy that a worse could not be found. At once the spirit of the garrison died away, for cowardice is often contagious. The besiegers’ works rapidly advanced, the ditch was passed, a lodgment was made on one of the ravelines, the rampart was breached, and the fire of the besieged being nearly silenced, on the 10th of March the place was summoned in a peremptory manner. Not that there was the least need to surrender. A strong body of British and Portuguese were in full march for the relief of the place. This information had been communicated by telegraph, besides which Imas had been informed by a confidential messenger that Masséna was in full retreat. The breach was not practicable, provisions were plentiful, the garrison above eight thousand strong, the French army reduced by sickness and the previous operations to fewer than fourteen thousand men. Imas, however, instantly surrendered, but he also demanded that his Grenadiers should march out of the breach. This was granted, and he was obliged to enlarge the opening before they could do so. Yet this man, so overwhelmed with opprobrium, was never punished.