Thus Saragossa gained four weeks of respite between the battle of Tudela and the commencement of the actual siege. This reprieve was invaluable to Palafox and the Aragonese. They would have been in grave danger if Lannes had marched on and assaulted the city only two days after the battle, and before the routed army had been rallied. Even if Ney and Moncey had been permitted to begin a serious attack on November 30, the day of their arrival before the place, they would have had some chance of success. But their sudden retreat raised the spirits of the defenders, and the twenty extra days of preparation thus granted to them sufficed to restore them to full confidence, and to re-establish their belief in the luck of Saragossa and the special protection vouchsafed them by its patron saint Our Lady of the Pillar. Napoleon must take the blame for all the consequences of Ney’s withdrawal. He had ordered it without fully realizing the fact that Moncey would be left too weak to commence the siege. Probably he had over-estimated the effect of the defeat of Tudela on the Army of Aragon. For the failure of Ney’s attempt to surround Castaños he was only in part responsible, though (as we have seen) he had sent him out on his circular march two days too late[105]. But to draw off the 6th Corps to New Castile (where it failed to do any good), before the 5th Corps had arrived to take its place before Saragossa, was clearly a blunder. [105] See vol. i. pp. 446-7. Palafox made admirable use of the unexpected reprieve that had been granted him. He had not, it will be remembered, taken part in person in the battle of Tudela, but had returned to his head quarters on the night before that disaster. He was occupied in organizing a reserve to take the field in support of his two divisions already at the front, when the sudden influx of fugitives into Saragossa showed him what had occurred. In the course of the next two days there poured into the place the remains of the divisions of O’Neille and St. March from his own Army of Aragon. With them came Roca’s men, who properly belonged to Castaños, but having fought in the right wing had been separated from the main body of the Andalusian army[106]. In addition, fragments of many other regiments of the Army of the Centre straggled into Saragossa. At least 16,000 or 17,000 men of the wrecks of Tudela had come in ere four days were expired. To help them, Palafox could count on all the newly organized battalions of his reserve, which had never marched out to join the field army: they amounted to some 10,000 or 12,000 men, but many of the regiments had only lately been organized and had not received their uniforms or equipment. Nor was this all: several belated battalions from Murcia and Valencia came in at various times during the next ten days[107], so that long ere the actual siege began Palafox could count on 32,000 bayonets and 2,000 sabres of more or less regularly organized corps.