The effect of the repulse of September 19 on the besieging army was appalling. Verdier, after writing three venomous letters to the Emperor, the War Minister, and Marshal Augereau[52], in which he accused St. Cyr of having deliberately sacrificed the good of the service to his personal resentments, declared himself invalided. He then went off to Perpignan, though permission to depart was expressly denied him by his superior: his divisional generals, Lecchi and Morio, had already preceded him to France. Disgust at the failure of the storm had the same effect on the rank and file: 1,200 men went to the hospital in the fortnight that followed the assault, till by October 1 the three divisions of the siege-corps numbered little more than 4,000 bayonets--just enough to hold Monjuich and the camps by the great dépôts at Pont Mayor and Sarria. The store of ammunition in the park had been used up for the tremendous bombardment poured upon the breaches from the 15th to the 17th of September. A new supply was wanted from Perpignan, yet no troops could be detached to bring it forward, for the miqueletes were again active, and on September 13 had captured or destroyed near Bascara a convoy guarded by so many as 500 men. [52] See especially Verdier to Augereau, no. 53, and to the Minister, no. 61, of Belmas’s Appendices. St. Cyr, left in sole charge of the siege by Verdier’s departure, came to the conclusion that it was useless to proceed with the attack by means of trenches, batteries, and assaults, and frankly stated that he should starve the town out, but waste no further lives on active operations. He drew in the covering corps closer to Gerona, so that it could take a practical part in the investment, put the wrecks of Lecchi’s troops--of whom less than 1,000 survived--into Pino’s division, and sent the French brigade of Verdier’s old division to guard the line between Bascara and the Frontier. Thus the distinction between the siege-corps and the covering troops ceased to exist, and St. Cyr lay with some 16,000 men in a loose circle round Gerona, intent not on prosecuting advances against the walls, but only on preventing the introduction of further succours. He was aware that acute privations were already being suffered by the Spaniards: Garcia Conde’s convoy had brought in not much more than eight days’ provisions for the 5,000 men of the reinforced garrison and the 10,000 inhabitants who still survived. There was a considerable amount of flour still left in store, but little else: meat, salt and fresh, was all gone save horseflesh, for Alvarez had just begun to butcher his draught horses and those of his single squadron of cavalry. There was some small store of chocolate, tobacco, and coffee, but wine and aguardiente had run out, so had salt, oil, rice, and--what was most serious with autumn and winter approaching--wood and charcoal. All the timbers of the houses destroyed by the