time the
trenches were relieved. The 1st, 3rd, and light divisions formed the
attacking force; each division held the trenches in turn for
twenty-four hours. Let the reader imagine what degree of hardihood it
took to wade in the grey and bitter winter dawn through a half-frozen
river, and without fire or warm food, and under a ceaseless rain of
shells from the enemy's guns, to toil in the frozen trenches, or to
keep watch, while the icicles hung from eyebrow and beard, over the
edge of the battery for twenty-four hours in succession.

Nothing in this great siege is more wonderful than the fierce speed
with which Wellington urged his operations. Massena, who had besieged
and captured the city the year before in the height of summer, spent a
month in bombarding it before he ventured to assault. Wellington broke
ground on January 8, under a tempest of mingled hail and rain; he
stormed it on the night of the 19th.

He began operations by leaping on the strong work that crowned the
Great Teson the very night the siege began. Two companies from each
regiment of the light division were detailed by the officer of the day,
Colonel Colborne, for the assault. Colborne (afterwards Lord Seaton),
a cool and gallant soldier, called his officers together in a group and
explained with great minuteness how they were to attack. He then
launched his men against the redoubt with a vehemence so swift that, to
those who watched the scene under the light of a wintry moon, the
column of redcoats, like the thrust of a crimson sword-blade, spanned
the ditch, shot up the glacis, and broke through the parapet with a
single movement. The accidental explosion of a French shell burst the
gate open, and the remainder of the attacking party instantly swept
through it. There was fierce musketry fire and a tumult of shouting
for a moment or two, but in twenty minutes from Colborne's launching
his attack every Frenchman in the redoubt was killed, wounded, or a
prisoner.

The fashion in which the gate was blown open was very curious. A
French sergeant was in the act of throwing a live shell upon the
storming party in the ditch, when he was struck by an English bullet.
The lighted shell fell from his hands within the parapet, was kicked
away by the nearest French in mere self-preservation; it rolled towards
the gate, exploded, burst it open, and instantly the British broke in.

For ten days a desperate artillery duel raged between the besiegers