chin to the west; on the east flows into the sea in a wide shallow tidal channel the river Urumea. The seaward tip of the lion's head is a rocky cone, some 400 feet high, called Monte Orgullo, crowned by the castle of La Mota. Across the sandy isthmus ran a high solid curtain with a huge hornwork, shaped like the point of an arrow, at its centre. Betwixt this wall and the base of Monte Orgullo stretched the town, having a population of something like 10,000 people. A line of ramparts ran along the eastern face of the town, betwixt the curtain across the neck of the isthmus and Monte Orgullo. The Urumea washed the foot of this rampart, and the frowning heights of Monte Orgullo commanded with their batteries the whole town.

Fortune gave to the French, in the person of General Rey, a commander for San Sebastian with a singular genius for defensive war. Rey, indeed, in personal appearance was quite unheroic. Fraser, who was second in command of the British artillery at the siege, met Rey after the surrender, and describes him as "a great fat man," in appearance resembling rather a pacific and heavy-bottomed Dutch burgher, than one of the most brilliant soldiers of the Napoleonic wars. Rey was not present at Vittoria; he left the day before the battle in command of a great convoy. The convoy passed on to France, but Rey, with his escort, entered San Sebastian, and set himself with stern energy, and the genius of a fine soldier, to prepare for the siege which he knew to be inevitable. Part of the wreck of Vittoria a few days afterwards flowed in wild tumult and confusion into the town; but Rey, with great resolution, swept the town of non-combatants, armed all his batteries, cleared out his

trenches and wells, turned the convent of San Bartolomeo, some 6co yards in advance of the curtain crossing the isthmus, into a strong place of arms; and, with all the art of a veteran soldier, set himself to hold San Sebastian against all comers. He had a garrison of some 3000 men; and 10,000 British and Spanish troops, under Sir Thomas Graham, the "hero of Barossa," one of Wellington's most trusted lieutenants, were moving down the slope of the Pyrenees to besiege him.

The Frenchman, however, had many things in his favour. San Sebastian lent itself easily to a stubborn defence. San Bartolomeo formed a strong outwork to the south; behind this, on the main road which crossed the narrow neck of the isthmus rose a great circular redoubt, formed of casks, and flanked by ruined houses, strongly held. These in turn were covered by the strong rampart which crossed the isthmus, with a powerful hornwork rising high in its centre. Thus, no less than three lines of defence had to be broken through before the town was reached. The town itself must be carried by obstinate street-fighting, while Monte Orgullo, with the stroke of its batteries, covered the whole field of combat, and could be held independently after the town itself had been carried.

The happiest feature for the French was the fact that they had practically an open sea base, and were in daily communication with France. It is an amazing fact that, eight years after Trafalgar, and while Great Britain was absolutely mistress of the sea, Wellington could not secure any adequate naval assistance in the siege of San Sebastian. A single British frigate, the

Surveillante, represented all the naval help the Admiralty could afford. Wellington's transports were captured almost daily by French privateers. The French garrison was perpetually fed by supplies sent directly from France. Vainly Wellington appealed to the Admiralty for ships. "Since Great Britain had been a naval power," he wrote bitterly, "a British army had never before been left in such a situation at a most important moment." Wellington's genius, however, was essentially practical. "If the navy of Great Britain," he wrote to Lord Bathurst, "cannot afford more than one frigate and a few brigs and cutters, fit, and used only, to carry despatches, to co-operate with this army in the siege of a maritime place, the possession of which before the bad season commences is important to the army as well as to the navy, I must be satisfied, and do the best I can without such assistance." "We have been obliged," he says in the same despatch, "to use the harbour boats of Passages, navigated by women, in landing the ordnance and stores, because there was no naval force to supply us with the assistance we require in boats." Wellington, in brief, in this siege of a hostile port, had to leave the aid of British ships out of his calculation.

But the aid the French derived from the open sea was simply past calculation. Boats came nightly to the garrison from Bayonne, bringing engineers, artillerymen, supplies of every kind, with news from the outside world, promises from Soult of immediate relief, and decorations, badges of honour, and crosses of the Legion of Honour in profusion to the soldiers who, from day to day, distinguished themselves in the siege. In this

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way the imagination of the besieged French was fed, as well as their material wants supplied. And the sense that a way of escape to the rear was open, that France was watching their defence, and that every act of valour brought an immediate reward in the shape of some decoration," or of promotion, bred such a spirit of daring and enthusiasm in the garrison that, says Maxwell-who was actually a prisoner in San Sebastian— "I believe the garrison, individually or collectively, would not have hesitated attempting any enterprise, however difficult or dangerous."

The principles of war are changeless, and Wellington's engineers adopted the very plan of attack employed by the Duke of Berwick, who besieged San Sebastian in 1719. Strong batteries were erected on the Chofres sandhills, to smite with their fire the comparatively weak eastern wall across the stream of the Urumea. Approaches were simultaneously to be pushed along the isthmus, so as to take in flank the wall which the breaching batteries were smiting in front, and to smash the defences by which the breach, when made, would be guarded. The plan was able, and if it had been carried out the siege would.never have attained what Napier calls its "mournful celebrity." Wellington, however, was guarding the passes against Soult, and left the conduct of the siege to Graham; and Graham allowed the eager spirits about him to over-ride what their impatience regarded as the too formal approaches of the engineers. They inverted, in a word, Vauban's well-known maxim, "Never attempt to carry anything at a siege by open force which may be gained by art and labour." The British leaders at San Sebastian