his men passed through the opening, used the beams as a
bridge across a wet ditch inside the palisade, and then advanced
noiselessly until near the Spaniards, into whom they fired a volley. The
Spaniards were seized with a sudden panic at finding themselves thus
unexpectedly taken in flank, and instantly took to flight. The moment the
fire of the marines told the admiral that the flank attack had succeeded,
he led the main body round to the rear of the fort. The Spaniards, as they
poured out there, communicated their panic to a body of three hundred
troops drawn up behind in reserve, and the whole fled toward the next
fort, followed hotly by the Chilians, who bayoneted numbers of them, and
pressed so closely on their heels that they entered the works, one after
the other, with them, driving them from fort to fort, together with two
hundred men who had been placed with a battery of guns on rising ground to
sweep the rear of the forts.

The last of these, the castle of Coral, was stormed with scarcely any
opposition, the enemy thinking only of escape. Numbers of them got away in
boats to Valdivia, while the rest plunged into the forests behind the
forts. Little over a hundred prisoners were taken, and a like number of
men were killed, their panic having been too great for anything like
resistance to be offered. On the Chilian side the loss was seven men
killed and nine wounded. The fall of all the western forts practically
entailed that of Valdivia, for while preparations were being made to
attack the eastern forts, the _O'Higgins_ appeared off the mouth of the
river, and the Spaniards, seeing this reinforcement to their foes, at once
abandoned the remaining forts and the town, and retreated into the
interior. The booty taken by the Chilians included fifty tons of gunpowder
and ten thousand cannon-shot. One hundred and seventy thousand musket
cartridges, a large number of muskets, and one hundred and twenty-eight
cannon also fell into the hands of the victors. A large ship with valuable
stores, together with a quantity of plate taken by the Spaniards from
Chilian churches, also were captured.

The value of the conquest was not, however, to be reckoned by the amount
of spoil taken. Its effect on the struggle was enormous. It raised the
spirits of the Chilians to the highest pitch, whilst it brought home to
the mind of the Spanish government the hopelessness of continuing a
struggle against an enemy so well led, and capabl