Early next morning, the light brigade advanced, and cautiously felt its way through the villages which were found to be unoccupied. The whole army approached the city by brigades, and passing in open column of companies, the divisions moved barely out of cannon-shot of the fort, and directed their march on the fords of Santa Martha and El Campo, while the French stood upon the ramparts of San Vicente, looking with marked interest on the allied masses as they defiled across the plain. The sixth division took possession of the city, while the others bivouacked in its immediate vicinity--and nothing could surpass the delight of the inhabitants, when they found themselves liberated from a bondage which they had endured for three long years. The men shouted their vivas,--the women caressed their deliverers,--while in the evening, music and dancing marked the general joy; and the illuminated streets might have been seen at the distance of many leagues. But it was only for a brief time that the advance of the allies was interrupted. The convent of San Vicente, placed on a perpendicular cliff rising from the bed of the Tormes, had been fortified by Marmont with admirable skill. It was connected at either side with the old wall by a line of works, its windows built up and crenellated, and the re-entering angle secured by a fascine battery, palisaded in front, and defended by a loop-holed wall. A steep descent towards the bridge was separated from the opposite high grounds by a small rivulet that joined the Tormes--while the convents of La Merced and Cayetano, on the farther bank of the stream, were converted into strong redoubts, and ditched, escarped, and casemated. No pains had been spared by the French engineers to render these works respectable. The inhabitants had been obliged to lend their unwilling assistance; while, from the ruins of thirteen convents, and two-and-twenty colleges, the best materials for gates, palisades, and drawbridges, had been obtained. A place so capable of defence, could not be left occupied by a hostile garrison in the rear of an advancing army. It must of necessity be reduced--and on the night of the 17th, the sixth division broke ground, and in full moonlight commenced erecting a breaching battery. Unforseen obstacles in warfare will frequently render the best-devised plans abortive. The vigilance of a dog saved the counterscarp of San Vicente from being blown up, and the miners failed, after suffering a heavy loss from a plunging fire, from which they could not protect themselves. Carcasses were tried without effect. The guns, four long eighteens, and four 24-pound howitzers, breached slowly, and it was the third morning before the lower wall of the convent was blown down. Its sudden fall brought the roof along with it, and a number of the defenders, then firing through the loop-holes, were buried in the ruins.