Here the retreat virtually closed. The weather improved; and having fallen back upon his resources, Lord Wellington was enabled to recruit his exhausted soldiery. Abundant fuel, dry bivouacs, and plentiful rations, produced a speedy change; and men wearied and worn down by privations and incessant fatigue, rapidly recovered their health and spirits. The moment the enemy had abandoned the pursuit, the light cavalry and guerilla horse were despatched to scour the woods, and rescue such sufferers as survived. Their efforts were attended with success--and more than fifteen hundred wounded or disabled men were brought into the hospitals and saved. The total casualties sustained by the troops during the siege and subsequent retreat of Burgos, were very numerous--and in no point are military writers and official returns more at variance, than in the respective estimates they form of the losses of the allies. Where such immense discrepancy exists, it is hard to come to any thing like an accurate conclusion. The French asserted that the allies lost twelve thousand men, _hors de combat_; the English reduced it to little more than twelve hundred. Between these extremes, the mean is more likely to prove correct; and there can be little doubt, all casualties included, that in the siege and subsequent operations to the 29th of October, seven thousand men were sacrificed.[213] The retreat from Burgos was not only remarkable for the sufferings they endured, but also for the insubordination exhibited by the soldiery. The mass of the army became drunkards and marauders. The wine-stores in the towns and villages on the line of march were broken into and despoiled of their contents; and multitudes, through inebriety, either perished or were made prisoners. In Valderoso alone, two hundred and fifty men were left drunk in the cellars--and, of course, they fell into the hands of the French. Drunkenness produced cruelty--and many of the peasantry hitherto well affected to the allies,[214] perished by the hands of infuriated savages, who seemed reckless whether friend or foe became the victim of their ferocity. Napier says, that on the first day’s march from Madrid, he reckoned seventeen murdered peasants, either lying on the road or thrown into the ditches.