You have read, no doubt, of this famous siege of Saragossa, and I
will only say that no general could have had a harder task than
that with which Marshal Lannes was confronted. The immense city
was crowded with a horde of Spaniards--soldiers, peasants,
priests --all filled with the most furious hatred of the French,
and the most savage determination to perish before they would
surrender. There were eighty thousand men in the town and only
thirty thousand to besiege them. Yet we had a powerful
artillery, and our engineers were of the best. There was never
such a siege, for it is usual that when the fortifications are
taken the city falls, but here it was not until the
fortifications were taken that the real fighting began. Every
house was a fort and every street a battle-field, so that slowly,
day by day, we had to work our way inwards, blowing up the houses
with their garrisons until more than half the city had
disappeared. Yet the other half was as determined as ever and in
a better position for defence, since it consisted of enormous
convents and monasteries with walls like the Bastille, which
could not be so easily brushed out of our way. This was the
state of things at the time that I joined the army.

I will confess to you that cavalry are not of much use in a
siege, although there was a time when I would not have permitted
anyone to have made such an observation. The Hussars of Conflans
were encamped to the south of the town, and it was their duty to
throw out patrols and to make sure that no Spanish force was
advancing from that quarter. The colonel of the regiment was not
a good soldier, and the regiment was at that time very far from
being in the high condition which it afterwards attained. Even