This functionary, who had gone to England sick in the latter end of 1811, and had returned to the army only the day before the siege of Burgos was raised, in passing from Lisbon by Badajoz to Madrid, and thence to Burgos, discovered that the inexperience of the gentleman who conducted the department during his absence had been productive of some serious errors. The magazines established between Lisbon and Badajos, and from thence by Almaraz to the valley of the Tagus, for the supply of the army in Madrid, had not been removed again when the retreat commenced, and Soult would have found them full, if his march had been made rapidly on that side; on the other hand the magazines on the line of operations, between Lisbon and Salamanca, were nearly empty. Kennedy had therefore the double task on hand to remove the magazines from the south side of the Tagus, and to bring up stores upon the line of the present retreat; and his dispositions were not yet completed when Wellington desired him to take measures for the removal of the sick and wounded, and every other incumbrance, from Salamanca, promising to hold his actual position on the Pisuerga until the operation was effected. Now there was sufficient means of transport for the occasion, but the negligence of many medical and escorting officers, conducting the convoys of sick to the rear, and the consequent bad conduct of the soldiers, for where the officers are careless the soldiers will be licentious, produced the worst effects. Such outrages were perpetrated on the inhabitants along the whole line of march that terror was every where predominant, and the ill-used drivers and muleteers deserted, some with, some without their cattle, by hundreds. Hence Kennedy’s operation in some measure failed, the greatest distress was incurred, and the commissariat lost nearly the whole of the animals and carriages employed; the villages were abandoned, and the under-commissaries were bewildered, or paralyzed, by the terrible disorder thus spread along the line of communication.