While both the assaulting columns were occupied in intrenching themselves there was a lull in the battle.

The besieged could not venture to advance against either, as they would have been exposed to the fire of the other, and to the risk of a flank attack.
Peterborough exerted himself to the utmost.

He ordered up the thousand men under General Stanhope and made prodigious exertions to get some guns and mortars into position upon the newly won ramparts.
Great was the consternation and astonishment in Barcelona when a loud roar of musketry broke out round the citadel, and Velasco, the governor, was thunderstruck to find himself threatened in this vital point by an enemy whose departure he had, the evening before, been celebrating.

The assembly was sounded, and the church bells pealed out the alarm.
The troops ran to their places of assembly, the fortifications round the town were manned, and a body of four hundred mounted grenadiers under the Marquis de Risbourg hurried off to the succor of Montjuich.

The earl had been sure that such a movement would be made.