Note 207 — CAPTURE OF MADRID.

“In all the former sieges, almost every misfortune during their progress has been readily traced, next to the smallness of the means with which they were undertaken, to the defective state of the siege establishments of the army, which were seldom equal to draw the full benefit from even the small supplies that were brought up. But on this occasion even such as those did not exist: there was not the semblance of an establishment of that nature; not even a half-instructed miner, or half-instructed sapper—barely an artificer—hence the deviations from the original project, and the delay in the execution of such parts of it as were followed, which, combined with accident, served to render the project unavailing.”—Journal of the Sieges.