Soon after the enemy appeared around Granada Lieut. O’Neal had fallen; and his brother Calvin, half frantic from the loss, called on Henningsen to permit him to charge the enemy forming near the church of San Francisco. The Allies were between four and five hundred strong; but O’Neal, in his fury, thought not of numbers, and every other feeling was drowned in grief for a brother’s death. At a convenient moment the general gave him thirty-two picked Rifles and let him loose on the enemy. O’Neal, barefooted and in his shirt sleeves, leaped on his horse, and calling on his Rifles to follow, dashed into the midst of the Allies as they formed near the old church. The men, fired by the spirit of their leader, followed in the same fierce career, dealing death and destruction on the terrified foe. The Allies were entirely unprepared for O’Neal’s sudden, dashing charge, and they fell as heedless travellers before the blast of the simoom. The slaughter made by the thirty-two Rifles was fearful, and so far were O’Neal and his men carried by the “rapture of the strife” that it was difficult for Henningsen to recall them to the Plaza. When they did return it was through streets almost blocked with the bodies of the Guatemalans they had slain. This charge well closed the fighting on the first day of the attack. At daybreak on the 25th, Henningsen had concentrated his force and was able to ascertain his real strength. He had only 227 men capable of bearing arms, and was encumbered with 73 wounded and 70 women, children, and sick persons. Twenty-seven had been cut off on the wharf, while Capt. Hesse with 22 men had been lost, either killed or taken prisoners, at the Guadalupe church. Henningsen had also seven guns and four mortars; but his supply of ammunition for these was so short as to make them of much less service than they might have been. This force was, during the night of the 24th, concentrated near the Plaza, and it held the adobe houses on each side of the principal street leading from the main square by the churches of Esquipulas and Guadalupe to the lake. A breastwork was built from the parish church on one side of the mouth of this street to the guard-house on the other side; and the Americans were also partially protected from the enemy by the burning buildings around and near the main Plaza.