While dealing with the operations of the French armies in the various provinces of Spain, we have observed that at every point the arrival of the news of Dupont’s disaster at Baylen produced notable results. It was this unexpected intelligence that drove the intrusive king out of Madrid within a week of his arrival, and ere the ceremonial of his proclamation had been completed. It brought back Bessières from the Esla to the Arlanzon, and raised the siege of Saragossa. Knowing of it Junot summoned his council of war at Torres Vedras with a sinking heart, and Duhesme lacked the confidence to try the ordeal of battle before Gerona. Beyond the Pyrenees its influence was no less marked. Napoleon had imagined that the victory of Rio Seco had practically decided the fate of the Peninsula, and at the moment of Baylen was turning his attention to Austria rather than to Spain. On July 25, five days after Dupont had laid down his arms, he was meditating the reinforcement of his army in Germany, and drafting orders that directed the garrisons of northern France on Mainz and Strasburg[324]. To a mind thus preoccupied the news of the disaster in Andalusia came like a thunderclap. So far was the Spanish trouble from an end, that it was assuming an aspect of primary importance. If Austria was really intending mischief, it was clear that the Emperor would have two great continental wars on his hands at the same moment--a misfortune that had never yet befallen him. It was already beginning to be borne in upon him that the treachery at Bayonne had been a blunder as well as a crime. Hence came the wild rage that bursts out in the letters written upon the days following that on which the news of Baylen reached him at Bordeaux. ‘Has there ever, since the world began,’ wrote Bonaparte to Clarke, his minister of war, ‘been such a stupid, cowardly, idiotic business as this? Behold Mack and Hohenlohe justified! Dupont’s own dispatch shows that all that has occurred is the result of his own inconceivable folly.... The loss of 20,000 picked men, who have disappeared without even inflicting any considerable loss on the enemy, will necessarily have the worst moral influence on the Spanish nation.... Its effect on European politics will prevent me from going to Spain myself.... I wish to know at once what tribunal ought to try these generals, and what penalty the law can inflict on them for such a crime[325].’ A similar strain runs through his first letter to his brother Joseph after the receipt of the news--‘Dupont has soiled our banners. What folly and what baseness! The English will lay hands on his army[326]. Such events make it necessary for me to go to Paris, for Germany, Poland, Italy, and all, are tied up in the same knot. It pains me grievously that I cannot be with you, in the midst of my soldiers[327].’ In other letters the capitulation is ‘a terrible catastrophe,’ ‘a horrible affair, for the cowards capitulated to save