oach under fire, they were compelled to attack fortresses defended
by the most warlike, practised, and scientific troops of the age."

[Footnote 37: In a letter dated February 11th, 1812, Wellington wrote
to the Secretary of State as follows:--"I would beg leave to suggest to
your lordship the expediency of adding to the engineer establishment a
corps of sappers and miners. It is inconceivable with what disadvantages
we undertake any thing like a siege for want of assistance of this
description. There is no French _corps d'armee_ which has not a
battalion of sappers and a company of miners; but we are obliged to
depend for assistance of this description upon the regiments of the
line; and although the men are brave and willing, they want the
knowledge and training which are necessary. Many casualties among them
consequently occur, and much valuable time is lost at the most critical
period of the siege."]

"The best officers and finest soldiers were obliged to sacrifice
themselves in a lamentable manner, to compensate for the negligence and
incapacity of a government, always ready to plunge the nation into war,
without the slightest care of what was necessary to obtain success. The
sieges carried on by the British in Spain were a succession of
butcheries; because the commonest materials, and the means necessary to
their art, were denied the engineers." Colonel J.T. Jones writes in
nearly the same terms of the early sieges in the Peninsula, and with
respect to the siege of Badajos, adds in express terms, that "a body of
sappers and miners, and the necessary fascines and gabions, would have
rendered the reduction of the work certain."[38] Soon after this siege a
body of engineer troops arrived from England, but their number was
insufficient, and Wellington, having learned by sad experience the
importance of engineer troops, ordered a body of two hundred volunteers
to be detached from the line, "and daily instructed in the practice of
sapping, making and laying fascines and gabions, and the construction of
batteries, &c." The siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, which immediately followed
this organization, was conducted with greater skill and success than any
other till nearly the close of the war; and all military writers have
attributed this result to the greater efficiency of the engineer force
engaged in the siege. This arm was now gradually increased, and the last
year of the war the engineer force with the English army in the fi