subordinates, and it is inexplicable that he did not in place of them bring up from Madrid real battering-guns: with ten more 18-pounders he would undoubtedly have taken the Castle of Burgos. But heavy guns require many draught cattle, and are hard to drag over bad roads: the absolute minimum had been taken with the army, as in June. And it was impossible to bring up more siege-guns in a hurry, as was done at the siege of the Salamanca forts, for the nearest available pieces were not a mere sixty miles away, as on the former occasion, but double and triple that distance. Yet if, on the first day of doubt before Burgos, Wellington had sent urgent orders for the dispatch of more 18-pounders from Madrid, they would have been up in time; though no doubt there would have been terrible difficulties in providing for their transport. It was only when it had grown too late that more artillery was at last requisitioned--and had to be turned back not long after it had started. Other defects there were in the besieging army, especially the same want of trained sappers and miners that had been seen at Badajoz, and of engineer officers[33]. Of this more hereafter:--the first and foremost difficulty, without which the rest would have been comparatively unimportant, was the lack of heavy artillery. But to proceed to the chronicle of the siege. On the evening on which the army arrived before Burgos the 6th Division took post on the south bank of the Arlanzon: the 1st Division and Pack’s Portuguese brigade swept round the city and formed an investing line about the Castle. It was drawn as close as possible, especially on the side of the hornwork of San Miguel, where the light companies of the first Division pushed up the hill, taking shelter in dead ground where they could, and dislodged the French outposts from the three _flèches_ which lay upon its sky-line. Wellington, after consulting his chief engineer and artillery officers, determined that his first move must be to capture the hornwork, in order to use its vantage-ground for battering the Castle. The same night (September 19-20) an assault, without any preparation of artillery fire, was made upon it. The main body of the assailing force was composed of Pack’s Portuguese, who were assisted by the whole of the 1/42nd and by the flank-companies[34] of Stirling’s brigade of the 1st Division, to which the Black Watch belonged. The arrangement was that while a strong firing party (300 men) of the 1/42nd were to advance to the neighbourhood of the horn work, ‘as near to the salient angle as possible,’ and to endeavour to keep down the fire of the garrison, two columns each composed of Portuguese, but with ladder parties and forlorn hopes from the Highland battalion, should charge at the two demi-bastions to right and left of the salient, and escalade them. Meanwhile the flank-companies of Stirling’s brigade (1/42nd, 1/24th, 1/79th) were to make a false attack upon the rear, or