In spite of incessant appeals to the authorities at home, the end of August arrived, and no provisions were received at the camp. The Duke then addressed Sir William Becher, enclosing a letter to be shewn to the King, stating that, if provisions did not arrive within twenty days, it would be impossible to detain the mariners at Rhé. Provisions, the Duke said, were getting low; and the cannon did little harm to the citadel, which would only be subdued by famine.[61] All seemed of no avail. “Everything,” as Sir William Becher complained to Nicholas, “seemed to go backwards.” Even the Duke’s own money, which he had wished to advance to the victuallers, was still kept back by his stewards; and six hundred quarters of wheat belonging to him, which he had left at Portsmouth as a supply, were still in that seaport. One cannot help echoing the exclamation of Sir Edward Conway, in writing to his father, General Conway--“If we lose this island it shall be your faults in England!” Every letter, meantime, spoke of the carelessness of life shown by the Duke, of the sanguine nature that encouraged others, and of his great affection to the King, and to the cause he had undertaken.[62] The difficulties which were encountered in getting provisions together are almost inconceivable at the present day: the merchants refused to supply anything that would not yield them fifteen per cent; but at last, Sir Edward Nicholas prevailed with some Bristol speculators, his friends, to send provisions, on condition that their men should not be pressed into the service, and that the vessels should be laden with salt.[63] This aid was, indeed, timely, for the troops were beginning to consider themselves neglected and forgotten by their country.[64] And a great loss contributed to the general dejection. Sir John Burgh, the brave though uncourtly officer who had quarrelled with the Duke, was shot through the body in the trenches, and killed. Sir Edward Conway, writing to his father, thus simply, and as a true soldier, remarks, that “the sorrow of the Duke, and the honours he doth in his burial, are sufficient encouragements to dying.” “There was some difference” he adds, “between Burgh and the Duke, through some inconsiderate words, on the part of former, which were by the Duke so freely forgiven,” and through these Conway thought “an honest man and the Duke could not be enemies.” By Buckingham’s orders the old general’s remains were sent home, to be interred in Westminster Abbey. “The army,” the same writer relates, “grows daily weaker--purses are empty, ammunition consumes, winter grows, their enemies increase in number and power, and they hear nothing from England.”[65] At length, on the twenty-first of September a letter[66] came from one of Buckingham’s friends, Sir Robert Pye, who, whilst declaring that the reinforcements were in great forwardness, begged of the Duke to “consider the end,” and to reflect on the