any general, however great, but already in April 1809 Wellesley had grasped the main outlines of the war that was to be. [353] If to Masséna’s field army of 60,000 men we add the troops on his communications (viz. the 9th Corps and the garrisons of Rodrigo and Almeida) and also the force which Soult and Mortier brought up against Badajoz and Elvas--a force against which Wellesley had to provide, by making large detachments--the full number of 100,000 is reached. Before passing on to the details of the campaign on the Douro, with which Wellesley’s long series of victories began, it is well to take a glance at the man himself, as he sat at his desk in Lisbon dictating the orders that were to change the face of the war. Arthur Wellesley was now within a few days of completing his fortieth year. He was a slight but wiry man of middle stature, with a long face, an aquiline nose, and a keen but cold grey eye. Owning an iron constitution on which no climate or season seemed to make the least impression, he was physically fit for all the work that lay before him--work more fatiguing than that which falls to most generals. For in the Peninsula he was required, as it soon appeared, to be almost as much of a statesman as of a general; while at the same time, owing to the inexperience of the British officers of that day in warfare on a large scale, he was obliged for some time to discharge for himself many of the duties which properly fall to the lot of the chief of the staff, the commissary-general, the paymaster-general, and the quartermaster-general in a well organized army. No amount of toil, bodily or mental, appeared too much for that active and alert mind, or for the body which seven years of service in India seemed to have tanned and hardened rather than to have relaxed. During the whole of his Peninsular campaigns, from 1808 to 1814, he was never prostrated by any serious ailment. Autumn rains, summer heat, the cold of winter, had no power over him. He could put up with a very small allowance of sleep, and when necessary could snatch useful moments of repose, at any moment of the twenty-four hours when no pressing duty chanced to be on hand. His manner of life was simple and austere in the extreme; no commander-in-chief ever travelled with less baggage, or could be content with more Spartan fare. Long after his wars were over the habit of bleak frugality clung to him, and in his old age men wondered at the bare and comfortless surroundings that he chose for himself, and at the scanty meals that sustained his spare but active frame. Officers who had long served in India were generally supposed to contract habits of luxury and display, but Wellesley was the exception that proved the rule. He hated show of any kind; after the first few days of the campaign of 1809 he discarded the escort which was wont to accompany the commander-in-chief. It was on very rare occasions that he was seen in his full uniform: the army