He had in addition a number of irregulars--armed citizens and peasants of the country-side--whose numbers it is impossible to fix, for though some had been collected in _partidas_ or volunteer companies, others fought in loose bands just as they pleased, and without any proper organization. They may possibly have amounted to 10,000 men at the time of the commencement of the siege, but so many were drafted into the local Aragonese battalions before the end of the fighting, that when the place surrendered in February, there were less than a thousand[108] of these unembodied irregulars under arms. [106] By far the larger part of Roca’s division reached Saragossa; the Spanish returns show that 4,500 men joined Palafox, and only 1,500 escaped to Cuenca with the rest of the ‘Army of the Centre.’ [107] Among these were the 1st and 2nd Tiradores de Murcia, the regiment of Florida Blanca, the 3rd and 5th Volunteers of Murcia, and the 3rd Volunteers of Valencia, all of which had arrived too late for Tudela. [108] To be exact, 756 was the number of _paisanos_ as opposed to _tropa_ in the return of the garrison on Feb. 20. See Arteche, Appendix to vol. iv. But it was not so much for the reorganization of his army as for the strengthening of his fortifications that Palafox found the respite during the first three weeks of December profitable. During the first siege it will be remembered that the fortifications of Saragossa had been contemptible from the engineer’s point of view: the flimsy mediaeval _enceinte_ had crumbled away at the first fire of the besiegers, and the real defence had been carried out behind the barricades. By the commencement of the second siege everything had changed, and the city was covered by a formidable line of defences, executed, as was remarked by one of the French generals[109], with more zeal and energy than scientific skill, but presenting nevertheless most serious obstacles to the besieger. [109] See Cavallero’s criticism of this statement of Rogniat on p. 17 of his interesting little work.