The army of the centre, after the combat of Burvieca, had continued its retreat unmolested by Ney. The time lost, in the false movement upon Mallen, was never recovered. The Spaniards escaped the sword, but their numbers daily diminished; their sufferings increased, and their insubordination kept pace with their privations. At Alcazar del Rey, Castaños resigned the command to general La-Peña, and proceeded to Truxillo himself, with an escort of thirty infantry and fifteen dragoons, a number scarcely sufficient to protect his life from the ferocity of the peasants, who were stirred up and prepared, by the falsehoods of the central junta, and the villany of the deserters, to murder him. Madrid was in a state of anarchy seldom equalled. A local and military junta were formed, to conduct the defence; the inhabitants took arms, a multitude of peasants from the neighbourhood entered the place, and the regular forces, commanded by the marquis of Castellar, amounted to six thousand men, with a train of sixteen guns. The pavement was taken up, the streets were barricadoed, the houses were pierced, and the Retiro, a weak irregular work, which commanded the city, was occupied in strength. Don Thomas Morla, and the prince of Castelfranco, were the chief men in authority. The people demanded ammunition, and when they received it, discovered, or said, that it was mixed with sand. Some person accused the marquis of Perales, a respectable old general, of the deed; a mob rushed to his house, murdered him, and dragged his body about the streets. Many others of inferior note fell victims to this fury, for no man was safe, none durst assume authority to control, none durst give honest advice; the houses were thrown open, the bells of the convents and churches rung incessantly, and a band of ferocious armed men traversed the streets in all the madness of popular insurrection. Eight days had now elapsed since the first preparations for defence were made; each day the public effervescence increased, the dominion of the mob became more decisive, their violence more uncontrollable, and the uproar was extreme, when, on the morning of the 2d of December, three heavy divisions of French cavalry suddenly appeared on the high ground to the north-west, and like a dark cloud overhung the troubled city. [Sidenote: Fourteenth Bulletin.] At twelve o’clock the emperor himself arrived, and the duke of Istria, by his command, summoned the town. The officer employed was upon the point of being massacred by the irregulars, when the Spanish soldiers, ashamed of such conduct, rescued him. This determination to resist was, notwithstanding the fierceness displayed at the gates, very unpalatable to many of the householders, numbers of whom escaped from different quarters; deserters also came over to the French, and Napoleon, while waiting for his infantry, examined all the weak points of the city.