‘I see that a disposition exists to blame the Government for the failure of the siege of Burgos. The Government had nothing to say to the siege: it was entirely my own act. In regard to means, there were ample means, both at Madrid and at Santander, for the siege of the strongest fortress. That which was wanting at both places was the means of transporting ordnance and military stores.... I could not find means for moving even one gun from Madrid. Popham is a gentleman who picques himself on overcoming all difficulties. He knows the time it took to find transport even for about 100 barrels of powder and a few hundred thousand rounds of musket ammunition that he sent me. As for the two guns that he endeavoured to send me, I was obliged to send my own cattle to draw them, and felt great inconvenience from the want of those cattle in subsequent movements of the Army[246].’ The answer that must be made to these allegations is that when matters came to a crisis at Madrid, on Soult’s approach, enough transport was found there to send off to Ciudad Rodrigo great part of the Retiro stores--though much of the material there had to be blown up. If there were not draught animals for even half a dozen guns to be got at Madrid, why did Wellington write on August 31st that ‘if the enemy shall advance, all arrangements must be made for the evacuation of Madrid, such as sending away sick, _stores_, &c., and eventually for the destruction of what cannot be carried off[247].’ Considerable convoys marched with Hill when the Spanish capital was evacuated, and it is impossible to believe that the 322 draught mules which, by Dickson’s estimate, were the proper allowance for a 24-pound battery of six guns with 180 rounds per gun, could not have been procured at Madrid in September. A requisition on the batteries and transport train of the four divisions left round Madrid could have been made to supplement local resources. But Wellington had made up his mind to risk the Burgos campaign with no more than Dickson’s trifling ‘artillery reserve’--of which the only efficient part was precisely three iron 18-pounders. As to the allusions to Home Popham, they must--with all regret--be described as ungrateful. And they conceal the fact that the two heavy ship-guns which Popham had sent forward were only brought _from Reynosa_ by Wellington’s own draught beasts. Popham got them across the mountains from Santander by his own exertions, and would have sent them some weeks earlier but for Wellington’s refusal to ask for them. And it was the ammunition sent by Popham which alone enabled the siege to go on for as long as it did.