The bombardment became constantly more serious.  The house where I live was filled as early as the 20th with persons obliged to fly from the Piazza di Gesu, where the fiery rain fell thickest.  The night of the 21st-22d, we were all alarmed about two o’clock, A.M. by a tremendous cannonade.  It was the moment when the breach was finally made by which the French entered.  They rushed in, and I grieve to say, that, by the only instance of defection known in the course of the siege, those companies of the regiment Union which had in charge a position on that point yielded to panic and abandoned it.  The French immediately entered and intrenched themselves.  That was the fatal hour for the city.  Every day afterward, though obstinately resisted, the enemy gained, till at last, their cannon being well placed, the city was entirely commanded from the Janiculum, and all thought of further resistance was idle.

It was true policy to avoid a street-fight, in which the Italian, an unpractised soldier, but full of feeling and sustained from the houses, would have been a match even for their disciplined troops.  After the 22d of June, the slaughter of the Romans became every day more fearful.  Their defences were knocked down by the heavy cannon of the French, and, entirely exposed in their valorous onsets, great numbers perished on the spot.  Those who were brought into the hospitals were generally grievously wounded, very commonly subjects for amputation.  My heart bled daily more and more at these sights, and I could not feel much for myself, though now the balls and bombs began to fall round me also.  The night of the 28th the effect was truly fearful, as they whizzed and burst near me.  As many as thirty fell upon or near the Hotel de Russie, where Mr. Cass has his temporary abode.  The roof of the studio in the pavilion, tenanted by Mr. Stermer, well known to the visitors of Rome for his highly-finished cabinet pictures, was torn to pieces.  I sat alone in my much exposed apartment, thinking, “If one strikes me, I only hope it will kill me at once, and that God will transport my soul to some sphere where virtue and love are not tyrannized over by egotism and brute force, as in this.”  However, that night passed; the next, we had reason to expect a still more fiery salute toward the Pincian, as here alone remained three or four pieces of cannon which could be used.  But on the morning of the 30th, in a contest at the foot of the Janiculum, the line, old Papal troops, naturally not in earnest like the free corps, refused to fight against odds so terrible.  The heroic Marina fell, with hundreds of his devoted Lombards.  Garibaldi saw his best officers perish, and himself went in the afternoon to say to the Assembly that further resistance was unavailing.