After the raising of the first siege by Verdier, the Spaniards had been for some time in a state of such confidence and exultation that they imagined that there was no need for further defensive precautions. The next campaign was to be fought, as they supposed, on the further side of the Pyrenees. But the long suspension of the expected advance during the autumn months began to chill their spirits, and, as the year drew on, it was no longer reckoned unpatriotic or cowardly to take into consideration the wisdom of strengthening the inland fortresses in view of a possible return of the French. In September, Colonel San Genis, the engineer officer who had worked for Palafox during the first siege, received permission to commence a series of regular fortifications for Saragossa. The work did not progress rapidly, for the Aragonese had not as yet much belief in the possibility that they might be called on once again to defend their capital. San Genis only received a moderate sum of money, and the right to requisition men of over thirty-five from the city and the surrounding villages. The labour had to be paid, and therefore the labourers were few. The new works were sketched out rather than executed. Things progressed with a leisurely slowness, till in November the dangers of the situation began to be appreciated, and the approach of the French reinforcements drove the Saragossans to greater energy. But it was only the thunderclap of Tudela that really alarmed them, and sent soldiers and civilians, men, women, and children, to labour with feverish haste at the completion of the new lines. Between November 25 and December 20 the amount of work that was carried out was amazing and admirable. If Ney and Moncey had been allowed to commence the regular siege before the month of November had expired, they would have found the whole system of works in an incomplete condition. Three weeks later Saragossa had been converted into a formidable fortress.