[5] Wellington to Wellesley, Oct. 30: Dispatches, v. 213. For stronger language about the rash folly of Spanish generals, see Wellington to Beresford, ibid. 179.
[6] Wellington to Wellesley, Aug. 24, from Merida.
[7] See Canning’s instruction to Wellesley of June 27, 1809, on pages 186-91 of Wellesley’s Dispatches and Correspondence, Lond. 1838.
[8] See Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens, i. 408, and Toreno, vol, ii. p. 72. Wellesley only calls the Duke ‘a person’: Dispatches, p. 160.
[9] Wellesley to Wellington, Sept. 19, 1809. Wellington, Supplementary Dispatches, vi. 372.
[10] For the text of this wordy proclamation see Wellesley’s Spanish Dispatches, pp. 135-9.
[11] Note the extraordinary similarity of this plan to that produced by the Athenian oligarchs in 411 B. C. Had some one been reading Thucydides?
[12] Catalonia had been added to his command after Reding died of wounds received at the battle of Valls.
[13] See vol. ii. p. 387.
[14] For an excellent personal diary of all these operations see General Von Brandt’s Aus meinem Leben, pp. 100-12. He accuses Suchet of grossly exaggerating, both in his dispatches and his memoirs, the difficulty and importance of these mountain raids (see Suchet’s Memoirs, i. pp. 40-74, for a highly picturesque narrative). The insurgents were still unskilled in arms, shot very poorly, kept bad watch, and were given to panic. That there is something in Brandt’s criticism seems to be shown by the fact that the whole division of Musnier lost between July 1 and Dec. 31, 1809, only three officers killed and eight wounded out of 200 present with the eagles in six months of incessant raids and skirmishes (see Martinien’s Liste des officiers, often quoted before).