“The evening chanced to be remarkably beautiful and still; there was not a cloud in the sky, nor a breath of wind astir, when suddenly the roar of artillery broke in upon its calmness, and volumes of smoke rose slowly from the batteries. These floating gently towards the town, soon enveloped the lower part of the hill, and even the ramparts and bastions in a dense veil; while the towers and summits lifting their heads over the haze, showed like fairy buildings, or those unsubstantial castles which are sometimes seen in the clouds on a summer’s day. The flashes from the British guns, answered as they were from the artillery in the front, and the roar of their thunder reverberating among the remote mountains of the Sierra de Francisca; these, with the rattle of the balls against the walls, proved altogether a scene which, to be rightly understood, must be experienced.”[153] That night the convent of San Francisco was escaladed by a wing of the 40th,--and the French having abandoned the suburbs, they were occupied by the besiegers. At daybreak on the 15th the batteries resumed their fire, and at sunset the walls of the main scarp and fausse braye[154] were visibly shaken.[155] Under cover of a fog on the 16th, the second parallel was prolonged; but the front of the works was so limited, and the fire of the enemy so concentrated and correct, that it required immense time to throw up a battery. The difficulty may be readily imagined, from the fact of the French having discharged at the approaches, upwards of twenty thousand shot and shells. Another battery of seven guns was opened on the 18th. On the 19th, two breaches were distinctly visible from the trenches, and on being carefully reconnoitred, they were declared practicable. Lord Wellington examined them in person,-- decided on storming them that evening,--and from behind the reverse of one of the approaches, issued written orders for the assault. The French were not inactive. The larger breach, exposing a shattered front of more than one hundred feet, had been carefully mined--the base of the wall strewn with shells and grenades, and the top, where troops might escalade, similarly defended. Behind, a deep retrenchment was cut to insulate the broken rampart, in the event of its being carried by storm. The lesser breach was narrow at the top, exceedingly steep, with a four-and-twenty-pounder turned sideways, that blocked the passage up, except an opening between the muzzle and the wall, by which two files might enter.