CHAPTER IV.
In the preceding chapters I have exposed the weakness, the folly, the improvidence of Spain, and shown how the bad passions and sordid views of her leaders were encouraged by the unwise prodigality of England. I have dissected the full boast and meagre preparations of the governments in both countries; laying bare the bones and sinews of the insurrection; and by comparing their loose and feeble structure with the strongly knitted frame and large proportions of the enemy, prepared the reader for the inevitable issue of a conflict between such ill-matched champions. In the present book, I shall recount the sudden and terrible manner in which the Spanish armies were overthrown, and the tempestuous progress of the French emperor.
But previous to relating these disasters I must revert to the period immediately following the retreat of king Joseph, and trace those early operations of the French and Spanish forces which, like a jesting prologue to a deep tragedy, unworthily ushered in the great catastrophe.
CAMPAIGN OF THE FRENCH AND SPANISH ARMIES BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF THE EMPEROR.
After general Cuesta was removed from the command, and that the junta of Seville was, by major Cox, forced to disgorge so much of the English subsidy as sufficed for the immediate relief of the troops in Madrid, all the Spanish armies closed upon the Ebro.
General Broderick’s Correspondence.
General Blake, reinforced by eight thousand Asturians, established his base of operations at Reynosa, opened a communication with the English vessels off the port of St. Andero, and directed his views towards Biscay.
The Castillian army, conducted by general Pignatelli, resumed its march upon Burgo del Osma and Logroña.
Capt. Whittingham’s.
The two divisions of the Andalusian troops under Lapeña, and the Murcian division of general Llamas, advanced to Taranzona and Tudela.
Colonel Doyle’s.
Palafox, with the Aragonese and Valencian divisions of St. Marc, operated from the side of Zaragoza.
Fourteen or fifteen thousand of the Estremaduran troops were drafted, and placed under the conduct of the conde de Belvedere, a weak youth, not twenty Castaños’s Vindication. years of age. They were at first directed upon Logroña, as forming part of Castaños’s command, but finally, as we shall find, received another destination.
Between these armies there was neither concert nor connexion; their movements were regulated by some partial view of affairs, or by the silly caprices of the generals, who were ignorant of each other’s plans, and little solicitous to combine operations. The weak characters of many of the chiefs, the inexperience of all, and the total want of system, opened a field for intriguing men, and invited unqualified persons to interfere in the direction of affairs. Thus we find colonel Doyle making a journey to Zaragoza, and priding himself upon having prevailed with Palafox to detach seven thousand men to Sanguessa; and captain Whittingham, without any knowledge of Doyle’s interference, earnestly dissuading the Spaniards from such an enterprise. The first affirmed, that the movement would “turn the enemy’s left flank, threaten his rear, and have the appearance of cutting off his retreat.” The second argued, that Sanguessa, being seventy miles from Zaragoza, and only a few leagues from Pampeluna, the detachment would itself be cut off. Doyle judged that it would draw the French from Caparosa and Milagro, and expose those points to Llamas and La-Peña; that it would force the enemy to recall the reinforcements said to be marching against Blake, and enable that general to form a junction with the Asturians, when he might, with forty thousand men, possess himself of the Pyrenees; and if the French army, estimated at thirty-five thousand men, did not fly, cut it off from France, or by moving on Miranda, sweep clear Biscay and Castille. Palafox, pleased with this plan, sent Whittingham to inform Llamas and La-Peña, that O’Neil would, with six thousand men, march on Whittingham’s Correspondence. the 15th of September to Sanguessa. Those generals disapproved of the movement as dangerous, premature, and at variance with the plan arranged in the council of war held at Madrid. Palafox, regardless of their opinion, persisted. O’Neil occupied Sanguessa, drew the attention of the enemy, and was immediately driven across the Alagon river.
In this manner all their projects, characterized by a profound ignorance of war, were lightly adopted and as lightly abandoned, or ended in disasters; yet victory was more confidently anticipated, than if consummate skill had presided over the arrangements; and this vain-glorious feeling, extending to the military agents, was by them propagated in England, where the fore-boasting was nearly as loud, and as absurd, as in the Peninsula. The delusion was universal; even lord William Bentinck and Mr. Stuart, deceived by the curious consistency of the Spanish falsehoods, doubted if the French army was able to maintain its position, Ld. W. Bentinck’s Correspondce. MS.
Doyle’s Correspondence. MS. and believed that the Spaniards had obtained a moral ascendancy in the field. Drunk with vanity and folly, the leading Spaniards in the capital, feeling certain that the “remnants,” as they were called, of the French army on the Ebro, estimated at from thirty-five to forty thousand men, would be immediately destroyed, proposed that the British army should be directed upon Catalonia, and when they found that this proposal was not acceded to, they withdrew ten thousand men from the Murcian division, and sent them to the neighbourhood of Lerida.
The natural pride and arrogance of the Spaniards were greatly aided by the timid and false operations of king Joseph. Twenty days after the evacuation [Appendix, No. 6.] of Madrid, that monarch was at the head of above fifty thousand fighting men, exclusive of eight thousand employed to maintain the communications, and to furnish the garrisons of Pampeluna, Tolosa, Irun, St. Sebastian, and Bilbao.
The French army of Catalonia, seventeen thousand in number, was, as we have seen, distinct from the king’s command; but a strong reserve, assembled at Bayonne, under general Drouet, supplied him with reinforcements, and was itself supported by drafts from the depôts in the interior of France.
Six thousand men, divided into several moveable columns, watched the openings of the Pyrenees, from St. Jean Pied de Port to Rousillon, and guarded the frontier from Spanish incursions; and a second reserve, composed of Neapolitans, Tuscans, and Piedmontese, was commenced at Belgarde, with a view of supporting Duhesme in Catalonia.
How the king quelled the nascent insurrection at Bilbao, and how he dispersed the insurgents of the valleys in Aragon, I have already related. After those operations the French army was re-organized and divided into three grand divisions and a reserve. Marshal Bessieres retained the command of the right wing; marshal Moncey assumed that of the left; and marshal Ney arriving at this period from Paris, took charge of the centre; while the reserve, chiefly composed of detachments from the imperial guard, remained near the person of the king. The old republican general, Jourdan, a man whose day of glory belonged to another era, re-appeared upon the military stage, and filled the office of major-general to the army.
With such a force, and so assisted, there was nothing in Spain, turn which way he would, capable of opposing king Joseph’s march; but the incongruity of a camp with a court is always productive of indecision and of error; the truncheon does not fit every hand, and the French army soon felt the inconvenience of having at its head a monarch who was not a warrior. Joseph remained on the defensive; but he did not understand the force of the maxim, “that offensive movements are the foundation of a good defence.” He held Bilbao, but he abandoned Tudela Napoleon’s notes. [Appendix, Nos. 4] and [5.] contrary to the advice of the generals who had conducted the operations on that side, and in its place Milagro, a small town, situated upon the rivers Arga and Aragon, just above their confluence with the Ebro, was by him chosen as the position of battle for the left wing. As long as Bessieres held Burgos in force, his cavalry commanded the valley of the Douero, menaced Palencia and Valladolid, and scouring the plains, kept Blake and Cuesta in check. Instead of reinforcing a post so advantageous, the king relinquished Burgos as a point beyond his line of defence, and Bessieres’ troops were posted in successive divisions behind it, as far as Puente Lara on the Ebro. Ney’s force lined that river down to Logroña; the reserve was quartered behind Miranda; and Trevino, a small obscure place, was chosen as the point of S.
Journal of the king’s operations. MS. battle, for the right and centre. In this disadvantageous situation the army, with some trifling changes, remained from the middle of August until late in September. During that time the artillery and carriages of transport were repaired, magazines were collected, the cavalry remounted, and the preparations made for an active campaign when the reinforcements should arrive from Germany.
The line of resistance thus offered to the Spaniards, evinced a degree of timidity which the relative strength of the armies by no means justified; the left of the French evidently leaned towards the great communication with France, and seemed to refuse the support of Pampeluna. Tudela was abandoned, and Burgos resigned to the enterprise of the Spaniards. All this indicated fear, a disposition to retreat if the enemy advanced. The king complained with what extreme difficulty he obtained intelligence; yet he neglected by forward movements to feel for his adversaries. Wandering as it were in the dark, he gave a loose to his imagination, and conjuring up a phantom of Spanish strength, which had no real existence, anxiously waited for the development of their power, while they were exposing their weakness by a succession of the most egregious blunders.
Joseph’s errors did not escape the animadversion of his brother, whose sagacity enabled him, although at a distance, to detect, through the glare of the insurrection, all the inefficiency of the Spaniards; but, despising them as soldiers, he dreaded the moral effect produced by their momentary success, and he was preparing to crush the rising hopes of his enemies. Joseph’s retreat, and subsequent position, therefore, displeased him; and he desired his brother to check the exultation of the patriots, by acting upon a bold and well-considered plan, of which he sent him the outline.
His notes, dictated upon the occasion, are replete with genius, and evince his absolute mastery of the art of war. “It was too late,” he said, “to discuss the question, whether Madrid should have been retained or abandoned? Idle to consider, if a position, covering [Appendix, No. 5.] the siege of Zaragoza, might not have been formed; useless to examine, if the line of the Douro was not better than that of the Ebro for the French army. The line of the Ebro was actually taken, and it must be kept; to advance from that river without a fixed object would create indecision; this would bring the troops back again, and produce an injurious moral effect; but why abandon Tudela? Why relinquish Burgos? Those towns were of note, and of reputation; the possession of them gave a moral influence, and moral force constituted two-thirds of the strength of armies. Tudela and Burgos had also a relative importance; the first possessing a stone bridge, was on the communication of Pampeluna and Madrid. It commanded the canal of Zaragoza. It was the capital of a province. When the army resumed offensive operations, their first enterprise would be the siege of Zaragoza; from that town to Tudela, the land carriage was three days, but the water carriage was only fourteen hours; wherefore to have the besieging artillery and stores at Tudela was the same as to have them at Zaragoza. If the Spaniards got possession of the former, all Navarre would be in a state of insurrection, and Pampeluna exposed. Tudela then was of vast importance; but Milagro was of none. It was an obscure place, without a bridge, and commanding no communication; in short, it was without interest, defended nothing! led to nothing! A river,” said this great commander, “though it should be as large as the Vistula, and as rapid as the Danube at its mouth, is nothing, unless there are good points of passage, and a head quick to take the offensive. The Ebro as a defence was less than nothing, a mere line of demarcation! and Milagro was useless. The enemy might neglect it, be at Estella, and from thence gain Tolosa, before any preparation could be made to receive him; he might come from Soria, from Logroña, or from Zaragoza. Again, Burgos was the capital of a province, the centre of many communications, a town of great fame, and of relative value to the French army. To occupy it in force, and offensively, would threaten Palencia, Valladolid, Aranda, and even Madrid. It is necessary,” observed the emperor, “to have made war a long time to conceive this. It is necessary to have made a number of offensive enterprises to know how much the smallest event, or even indication, encourages or discourages, and decides the adoption of one enterprise instead of another.” “In short, if the enemy occupies Burgos, Logroña, and Tudela, the French army will be in a pitiful position. It is not known if he has left Madrid; you are ignorant of what has become of the Gallician army, and we have reason to suspect that it may have been directed upon Portugal; in such a state to take up, instead of a bold, menacing, and honourable position like Burgos, a confined shameful one like Trevino, is to say to the enemy, you have nothing to fear, go elsewhere, we have made our dispositions to go farther, or we have chosen our ground to fight; come there, without fear of being disturbed. But what will the French general do if the enemy marches the next day upon Burgos? Will he let the citadel of that town be taken by six thousand insurgents? or if the French have left a garrison in the castle, how can four or five hundred men retire in such a vast plain? and, from that time, all is gone; the enemy master of the citadel, it cannot be retaken; if, on the contrary, we should guard the citadel, we must give battle to the enemy, because it cannot hold out more than three days, and if we wish to fight a battle, why should Bessieres abandon the ground where we wish to fight? These dispositions appear badly considered, and when the enemy shall march, our troops will meet with such an insult as will demoralize them if there are only insurgents or light troops advancing against them. If fifteen thousand insurgents enter into Burgos, retrench themselves in the town, and occupy the castle, it will be necessary to calculate a march of several days to enable us to post ourselves there, and to retake the town, which cannot be done without some inconvenience. If, during the time, the real attack is upon Logroña or Pampeluna, we shall have made countermarches without use, which will have fatigued the army. If we hold it with cavalry only, is it not to say we do not intend stopping, and to invite the enemy to come there? It was the first time,” he said, “that an army had quitted all its offensive positions to take up a bad defensive line, and to affect to choose its field of battle, when the thousand and one combinations which might take place, and the distance of the enemy, did not leave a probability of being able to foresee if the battle would take place at Tudela, between Tudela and Pampeluna, between Soria and the Ebro, or between Burgos and Miranda;” and then followed an observation which may be studied with advantage by those authors who, unacquainted with the simplest rudiments of military science, censure the conduct of a general, and are pleased, from some obscure nook, to point out his errors to the world; authors who, profoundly ignorant of the numbers, situation, and resources of the opposing armies, pretend, nevertheless, to detail with great accuracy the right method of executing the most difficult and delicate operations of war. As the rebuke of Turenne, who frankly acknowledged to Louvois that he could pass the Rhine at a particular spot if the latter’s finger were a bridge, has been lost upon such men, perhaps the more recent opinion of Napoleon may be disregarded. “But it is not permitted,” says that consummate general, “it is not permitted, at the distance of three hundred leagues, and without even a state of the situation of the army, to direct what should be done!”
After having thus protected himself from the charge of presumption, the emperor proceeded to recommend certain dispositions for the defence of the Ebro. The Spaniards, he said, were not to be feared in the field; twenty-five thousand French in a good position would suffice to beat all their armies united, and this opinion he deduced from the events of Dupont’s campaign, of which he gave a short analysis. Let Tudela, he said, be retrenched if possible, at all events it should be occupied in force, and offensively towards Zaragoza. Let the general commanding there collect provisions on all sides; secure the boats, with a view to future operations when the reinforcements should arrive, and maintain his communication with Logroña by the right bank if he can, but certainly by the left. Let his corps be considered as one of observation; if a body of insurgents only approach, he may fight them, or keep them constantly on the defensive by his movements against their line or against Zaragoza. If regular troops attack him, and he is forced across the Ebro, let him then manœuvre about Pampeluna until the general-in-chief has made his dispositions for the main body. In this manner no prompt movement upon Estella and Tolosa can take place, and the corps of observation will have amply fulfilled its task. Let marshal Bessieres, with all his corps united, and reinforced by the light cavalry of the army, encamp in the wood near Burgos; let the citadel be well occupied, the hospital, the dépôts, and all encumbrances sent over the Ebro; let him keep in a condition to manœuvre, be under arms every day at three o’clock in the morning, and remain until the return of his patroles. He should send parties to a great extent, as far as two days’ march. Let the corps of the centre be placed at Miranda and Briviesca, and all the encumbrances be likewise sent across the Ebro behind Vittoria. This corps should be under arms every morning, and send patroles by the road of Soria, and wherever the enemy may be expected. It must not be lost sight of, that these two corps, being to be united, they should be connected as little as possible with Logroña, and consider the left wing as a corps detached, having a line of operations upon Pampeluna, and a separate part to act. Tudela is preserved as a post contiguous to the line. Be well on the defensive, he continues, in short, make war, that is to say, get information from the alcaldes, the curates, the posts, the chiefs of convents, and the principal proprietors, you will then be perfectly informed; the patroles should always be directed upon the side of Soria, and of Burgos, upon Palencia, and upon the side of Aranda. They could thus form three posts of interception, and send three reports of men arrested; these men should be treated well, and dismissed, after they had given the information desired of them. Let the enemy then come, and we can unite all our forces; hide our marches from him, and fall upon his flank at the moment he is meditating an offensive movement.
With regard to the minor details, the emperor thus expressed himself: “Soria is not, I believe, more than two short marches from the actual position of the army; that town has constantly acted against us; an expedition sent there to disarm it, to take thirty of the principal people as hostages, and to obtain provisions, would have a good effect. It would be useful to occupy St. Ander. It will be of advantage to move by the direct road of Bilbao to St. Ander. It will be necessary to occupy and disarm Biscay and Navarre. Every Spaniard taken in arms there should be shot[17]. The manufactories of arms at Palencia should be watched, to hinder them from working for the rebels. The port of Pancorbo should be armed and fortified with great activity; ovens, and magazines of provisions and ammunition, should be placed there. Situated nearly half way between Madrid and Bayonne, it is an intermediate post for the army, and a point of support for troops operating towards Gallicia. The interest of the enemy,” he resumes, “is to mask his forces. By hiding the true point of attack, he operates in such a manner, that the blow he means to strike is never indicated in a positive way, and the opposing general can only guess it by a well-matured knowledge of his own position, and of the mode in which he makes his offensive system act, to protect his defensive system. We have no accounts of what the enemy is about; it is said that no news can be obtained, as if this case was extraordinary in an army, as if spies were common: they must do in Spain, as they do in other places. Send parties out. Let them carry off, sometimes the priest, sometimes the alcalde, the chief of a convent, the master of the post or his deputy, and, above all, the letters. Put them under arrest until they speak. Question them twice each day, or keep them as hostages. Charge them to send foot messengers, and to get news. When we know how to take measures of vigour and force, it is easy to get news. All the posts, all the letters, must be intercepted. The single motive of procuring intelligence will be sufficient to authorise a detachment of four or five thousand men, who will go into a great town, will take the letters from the post, will seize the richest citizens, their letters, papers, gazettes, &c. It is beyond doubt, that even in the French lines, the inhabitants are all informed of what passes; of course, out of that line, they know more; what, then, should prevent you from seizing the principal men? Let them be sent back again without being ill treated. It is a fact, that when we are not in a desert, but in a peopled country, if the general is not well instructed, it is because he is ignorant of his trade. The services which the inhabitants render to an enemy’s general, are never given from affection, nor even to get money. The truest method to obtain them is by safeguards and protections to preserve their lives, their goods, their towns, or their monasteries!”
Joseph, although by no means a dull man, seems to have had no portion of his brother’s martial genius, and the operations recommended by the latter did not appear to the king to be applicable to the state of [Appendix, No. 6.] affairs. He did not adopt them, but proposed others; in discussing which, he thus defended the policy of his retreat from Madrid.
“When the defection of twenty-two thousand men (Dupont’s) caused the king to quit the capital, the disposable troops remaining were divided in three corps: that immediately about his person; that of marshal Bessieres; and that of general Verdier, then besieging Zaragoza: but these bodies were spread over a hundred leagues of ground, and with the last the king had little or no connexion. His first movement was to unite the two former at Burgos, and afterwards to enter into communication with the third. The line of defence on the Ebro was adopted.” This operation Joseph affirmed to have been dictated by sound reason.—Because “when the events of Andalusia foreboded a regular and serious war, prudence did not permit three corps, the strongest of which was only eighteen thousand men, to separate to a greater distance than six days’ march, in the midst of eleven millions of people in a state of hostility. But fifty thousand French could defend with success a line of sixty leagues, guarding the two grand communications of Burgos and Tudela, against enemies who had not, up to that period, been able to carry to either point above twenty-five thousand men; because fifteen thousand French could be united upon either.”
Joseph was dissatisfied with Napoleon’s plans, and preferred his own. The disposable troops at his command, exclusive of those in Bilbao, were fifty thousand; these he distributed as follows. The right wing occupied Burgos, Pancorbo, and Puente Lara. The centre was posted between Haro and Logroña; the left extended from Logroña to Tudela; the latter town was not occupied. He contended that this arrangement, at once offensive and defensive, might be advantageously continued, if the great army directed upon Spain arrived in September, since it tended to refit the army already there, and menaced the enemy; but that it could not be prolonged until November, because in three months the Spaniards must make a great progress, and would very soon be in a state to take the offensive with grand organized corps, obedient to a central administration, which would have time to form in Madrid. Every thing announced, he said, that the month of October was one of those decisive epochs which gave to the party who knew how to profit from it, the priority of movements and success, the progress of which it was difficult to calculate.
In this view of affairs, the merits of six projects were discussed by the king.
First. To remain in the actual position. This was declared to be unsustainable, because the enemy could attack the left with forty thousand, the centre with forty thousand, the right with as many. Tudela and Navarre, as far as Logroña, required twenty-five thousand men to defend them. Burgos could not be defended but by an army in a state to resist the united forces of Blake and Cuesta, which would amount to eighty thousand men, and it was doubtful if the twenty thousand bayonets which could be opposed, could completely beat them; if they did not, the French would be harassed by the insurgents of the three provinces (Biscay, Navarre, and Guipuscoa), who would interpose between the left wing and France.
Second project. To carry the centre and reserve by Tudela, towards Zaragoza or Almazan; united with the left, they would amount to thirty thousand men, who might seek for, and, doubtless, would defeat the enemy, if he was met with on that side. In the meantime, the right wing, leaving garrisons in the citadel of Burgos and the fort of Pancorbo, could occupy the enemy, and watch any movements in the Montagna St. Ander, or disembarkations that might take place at the ports; but this task was considered difficult, because Pancorbo was not the only defile accessible to artillery. Three leagues from thence, another road led upon Miranda, and there was a third passage over the point of the chain which stretched between Haro and Miranda.
Third project. To leave the defence of Navarre to the left wing. To carry the centre, the reserve, and the right wing, to Burgos, and to beat the enemy before he could unite; an easy task, as the French would be thirty thousand strong. Meanwhile, Moncey could keep the Spaniards in check on the side of Tudela, or if unable to do that, he was to march up the Ebro, by Logroña and Briviesca, and join the main body. The communication with France would be thus lost, but the army might maintain itself until the arrival of the emperor. A modification of this project proposed that Moncey, retiring to the entrenched camp of Pampeluna, should there await either the arrival of the emperor, or the result of the operations towards Burgos.
Fourth project. To pass the Ebro in retreat, and to endeavour to tempt the enemy to fight in the plain between that river and Vittoria.
Fifth project. To retire, supporting the left upon Pampeluna, the right upon Montdragon.
Sixth project. To leave garrisons, with the means of a six weeks’ defence, in Pampeluna, St. Sebastian, Pancorbo, and Burgos. To unite the rest of the army march against the enemy, attack him wherever he was found, and then wait either near Madrid or in that country, into which the pursuit of the Spaniards, or the facility of living, should draw the army. This plan relinquished the communications with France entirely, but it was said that the grand army could easily open them again, and the troops already in Spain would be sufficiently strong to defy all the efforts of the enemy, to disconcert all his projects, and to wait in a noble attitude the general impulse which would be given by the arrival of the emperor.
Of all these projects the last was the favourite with the king, who strongly recommended it, and asserted, that if it was followed, affairs would be more prosperous when the emperor arrived than could be expected from any other plan. Marshal Ney and general Jourdan approved of it; but it would appear that Napoleon had other views, and too little confidence in his brother’s military judgment, to intrust so great a matter to his guidance.
OBSERVATIONS.
1º. It is undoubted, that there must always be some sympathy of genius in the man who is to execute another’s conception in military affairs. Without that species of harmony between their minds, the thousand accidental occurrences and minor combinations which must happen contrary to expectation, will inevitably embarrass the executor to such a degree, that he will be unable to see the most obvious advantages, and in striving to unite the plan he has received with his own views, he will adopt neither, but steer an unsteady reeling course between both, and fail of success. The reason of this appears to be, that a strong, and, if the term may be used, inveterate attention must be fixed upon certain great principles of action in war, to enable a general to disregard the minor events and inconveniences which cross his purpose; minor they are to the great object, but in themselves sufficient to break down the firmness and self-possession of any but extraordinary men.
2º. The original memoir from which Joseph’s projects have been extracted is so blotted and interlined, that it would be unfair to consider it as a matured production. The great error which pervades it, is the conjectural data upon which he founds his plans, and the little real information which he appears to have had relative to the Spanish forces, views, or interior policy. Thus he was prepared to act upon the idea, that the central junta would be able and provident; the parties united, and the armies strong and well administered; none of which things really took place. Again, he estimated Cuesta and Blake’s armies at eighty thousand, and considered them as one body; but they were never united at all, and if they had, they would scarcely have amounted to sixty thousand. The bold idea of throwing himself into the interior came too late; he should have thought of that before he quitted Madrid, or at least before the central government was established at that capital. His operations might have been successful against the miserable armies opposed to him; against good and moveable troops they would not, as the emperor’s admirable notes prove.
The first project, wanting those offensive combinations discussed by Napoleon, was open to all his objections, as being timid and incomplete. The second was crude and ill-considered, for, according to the king’s estimate of the Spanish force, thirty thousand men on each wing might oppose the heads of his columns, sixty thousand could still have been united at Logroña, pass the Ebro, excite an insurrection in Navarre, Guipuscoa, and Biscay, seize Tolosa and Miranda, and fall upon the rear of the French army, which thus cut in two, and its communications intercepted, would have been extremely embarrassed. The third was not better judged. Burgos as an offensive post, protecting the line of defence, was very valuable, and to unite a large force there was so far prudent; but if the Spaniards retired, and refused battle with their left, while the centre and right operated by Logroña and Sanguessa, what would have been the result? the French right must without any definite object either have continued to advance, or remained stationary without communication, or returned to fight a battle for those very positions which they had just quitted. The fourth depended entirely upon accident, and is not worth argument. The fifth was an undisguised retreat. The sixth was not applicable to the actual situation of affairs. The king’s force was no longer an independent body, it was become the advanced guard of the great army, marching under Napoleon. It was absurd, therefore, to contemplate a decisive movement, without having first matured a plan suitable to the whole mass that was to be engaged in the execution. In short, to permit an advanced guard to determine the operations of the main body, was to reverse the order of military affairs, and to trust to accident instead of design. It is curious, that while Joseph was proposing this irruption into Spain, the Spaniards and the military agents of Great Britain were trembling lest he should escape their power by a precipitate flight. “War is not a conjectural art!”