had been encountered, and that the main attack was arrested. "This is terrible," Peter said, as almost breathless they watched the storm of fire on and around the breach. "This is a thousand times worse than a battle. It is awful to think how the shot must be telling on that dense mass. Can nothing be done?" "Hurrah! There go the light division at the small breach," Tom exclaimed, as the French fire broke out along the ramparts in that quarter. A violent cheer came up even above the din from the great breach, but no answering fire lights the scene, for Major Napier, who commanded, had forbidden his men to load, telling them to trust entirely to the bayonet. There was no delay here; the firing of the French ceased almost immediately, as with a fierce rush the men of the light division bounded up the ruins and won the top of the breach. For a moment or two there was a pause, for the French opened so fierce a fire from either side, that the troops wavered. The officers sprang to the front, the soldiers followed with the bayonet, and the French, unable to stand the fierce onslaught, broke and fled into the town. Then the men of the light division, rushing along the walls, took the French who were defending the great breach in rear, and as these gave way, the attacking party swept across the obstacles which, had hitherto kept them, and the town was won. Pack's Portuguese had effected an entrance at the St. Jago gate, which they found almost deserted, for the garrison was weak, and every available man had been taken for the defence of the breaches. Thus was Ciudad Rodrigo taken after twelve days' siege, with a loss of twelve hundred men and ninety officers, of which six hundred and fifty men and sixty officers fell in that short, bloody fight at the breaches. Among the killed was General Craufurd, who had commanded at the fight on the Coa. Upon entering the town three days afterwards, at the termination of the disgraceful scene of riot and pillage with which the British soldier, there as at other places, tarnished the laurels won by his bravery in battle, the boys went to the scene of the struggle, and then understood the cause of the delay upon the part of the stormers. From the top of the breach there was a perpendicular fall of sixteen feet, and the bottom of this was planted with sharp spikes, and strewn with the fragments of shells which the French had rolled down into it. Had it not been for the light division coming up, and taking the defenders--who occupied the loopholed and fortified houses which commanded this breach--in rear, the attack here could never have succeeded.