[23] This indictment of Suchet must be supported by details. In his elaborate table of casualties by corps at the end of his dispatch of Oct. 20, he only allows for 3 officers killed and 8 wounded, 40 men killed and 122 wounded--total 173. But the lists of officers’ casualties in Martinien show, on the other hand, _five_ officers killed (Coutanceau, Saint Hilaire, Turno, Giardini, Cuny), and at least _ten_ wounded (Mathis, Durand, Gauchet, D’Autane, Adhémar, Gattinara, Lamezan, D’Esclaibes, Maillard, Laplane), and probably three more. Oddly enough, in his _Mémoires_ (ii. p. 173) Suchet gives _by name_ four officers killed at the breach (out of the five), while in his official report he had stated that there were only three killed altogether. We must trust rather Vacani, an eye-witness and a man much interested in statistics and casualties, when he gives the total of 300 for the losses, than Suchet’s table. After this Suchet resolved to make no more attempts to storm Saguntum. ‘When even the best of soldiers,’ remarks Belmas, ‘have made every effort to carry a place and have failed, they imagine that the place is impregnable. And if an attempt is made to lead them once more to an assault, they will not again act with the confidence which is needed to secure victory.’ Wellington was to find this out at Burgos, a year later. Indeed in their early stages the sieges of Saguntum and Burgos show a rather notable parallelism, though their ends were dissimilar. General Rogniat easily persuaded the Marshal to drop the heroic method which had gained so little success, and to fall back on the systematic work which is slow but certain[24].’ Suchet gave permission to the engineers to establish more batteries, and to defer all further attempts to storm till the approaches should have been carried up to the very foot of the walls, and the whole curtain of the Dos Mayo redoubt should have been battered down. [24] Belmas, iv. p. 96. The garrison, much encouraged by their successful effort of the 18th, continued to make an obstinate resistance: as the enemy sapped uphill towards them, they kept up such a careful and deadly fire that the casualties in the trenches amounted every day to 15 or 20 men. For the next six days nothing decisive happened, though the works continued to creep slowly forward: they had to be built with parapets consisting entirely of earth brought from below, and made very high, since the nearer they got to the works, the more did the plunging fire from above search them out.