[336] This is proved by Berthier’s letter to King Joseph of April 16 (Ducasse’s Correspondence of King Joseph, viii. p. 382), which says that he has just received Marmont’s dispatch of March 30 acknowledging his own of March 16, and that the Marshal now knows that he must obey orders from Madrid.
[337] Soult to Berthier from Seville, April 17.
[338] A copy of this print is among the Scovell Papers: it does credit to the Valencian press by its neat appearance.
[339] The question about the Army of the North is a very curious one. The authorized copy of the dispatch of May 16, printed in Napoleon’s correspondence and in Ducasse’s Correspondence of King Joseph, certainly omits its name. But the King declared that in his original copy of it Dorsenne and his army were mentioned as put under his charge. In one of the intercepted dispatches in the Scovell Papers, Joseph writes angrily to Berthier, giving what purports to be a verbatim duplicate of the document, and in this duplicate, which lies before my eyes as I write this, the Army of the North is cited with the rest.
[340] One of Marmont’s colonels in the province of Segovia was at this moment threatening to use armed force against the King’s troops for resisting his requisitions. See Miot, iii. p. 222.
[341] See Miot de Melito’s Mémoires, iii. p. 215.
[342] Jourdan’s Mémoires, p. 384.
[343] Oddly enough this letter was in duplicate, and while one copy fell into Joseph’s hands, the other was captured by guerrilleros and sent to Wellington. The cipher was worked out by Scovell, and the contents gave Wellington useful information as to the relations between Soult and the King. See below, [pages 530-39].
[344] Printed whole in Jourdan’s Mémoires, pp. 386-94.
[345] i. e. for the collection of troops in the valley of the Tagus, to join Foy and operate for the relief of Badajoz.