[Footnote 4: Alluding to the rapidity of the French retreat.]
Dispatch, May 18, 1809.
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I have long been of opinion that a British army could bear neither success nor failure.[5]
[Footnote 5: Referring to their habits of plunder.]
Dispatch, May 31, 1809.
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Inefficiency of Spanish Officers.
Nothing can be worse than the officers of the Spanish army, and it is extraordinary that when a nation has devoted itself to war, as this nation has by the measures which it has adopted in the last two years, so little progress has been made in any one branch of the military profession by any individual, and that the business of an army should be so little understood. They are really children in the art of war, and I cannot say they do anything as it ought to be done, with the exception of running away, and assembling again in a state of nature.
Dispatch, Aug. 1809.