The garrison of Burgos belonged to the Army of the North, not to that of Portugal. Caffarelli himself paid a hasty visit to the place just before the siege began, and threw in some picked troops--two battalions of the 34th[28], one of the 130th; making 1,600 infantry. There were also a company of artillery, another of pioneers, and detachments which brought up the whole to exactly 2,000 men--a very sufficient number for a place of such small size. There were nine heavy guns (16- and 12-pounders), of which eight were placed in the Napoleon battery, eleven field-pieces (seven of them in San Miguel), and six mortars or howitzers. This was none too great a provision, and would have been inadequate against a besieger provided with a proper battering-train: Wellington--as we shall see--was not so provided. The governor was a General of Brigade named Dubreton, one of the most resourceful and enterprising officers whom the British army ever encountered. He earned at Burgos a reputation even more brilliant than that which Phillipon acquired at Badajoz. The weak points of the fortress were firstly the unfinished condition of the San Miguel hornwork, which Dubreton had to maintain as long as he could, in order that the British might not use the hill on which it stood as vantage ground for battering the Castle; secondly, the lack of cover within the works. The Donjon and the church of Santa Maria could not house a tithe of the garrison; the rest had to bivouac in the open, a trying experience in the rain, which fell copiously on many days of the siege. If the besiegers had possessed a provision of mortars, to keep up a regular bombardment of the interior of the Castle, it would not long have been tenable, owing to the losses that must have been suffered. Thirdly must be mentioned the bad construction of many of the works--part of them were mediaeval structures, not originally intended to resist cannon, and hastily adapted to modern necessities: some of them were not furnished with parapets or embrasures--which had to be extemporized with sandbags. Lastly, it must be remembered that the conical shape of the hill exposed the inner no less than the outer works to battering: the lower _enceintes_ only partly covered the inner ones, whose higher sections stood up visible above them. The Donjon and Santa Maria were exposed from the first to such fire as the enemy could turn against them, no less than the walls of the outer circumference. If Wellington had owned the siege-train that he brought against Badajoz, the place must have succumbed in ten days. But the commander was able and determined, the troops willing, the supply of food and of artillery munitions ample--Burgos had always been an important dépôt. Dubreton’s orders were to keep his enemy detained as long as possible--and he succeeded, even beyond all reasonable expectations.