seems to have believed that his master disliked to have battles won for him by officers who had not owed to him the beginning of their fortunes[52], and would have been rather pleased than otherwise to see the attempt to relieve Barcelona end in a failure. [51] For several curious and interesting stories concerning St. Cyr, the reader may search the third volume of Marbot’s _Mémoires_. Marbot is not an authority to be followed with much confidence, but the picture drawn of the marshal is borne out by other and better writers. [52] ‘On ne pourra pas échapper à la pensée que Napoléon, avec sa force immense, a été assez faible pour ne vouloir que des succès obtenus par lui-même, ou du moins sous ses yeux. Autrement on eût dit que la victoire était pour lui une offense: il en voulait surtout à la fortune quand elle favorisait les armes d’officiers qui ne lui devaient pas leur élévation.’ _Journal de l’Armée de Catalogne_, p. 26. These are, of course, the vain imaginings of a jealous and suspicious hypochondriac. It is true that Napoleon disliked St. Cyr, but he did not want to see the campaign of Catalonia end in a disaster. He gave the new general a fine French division of veteran troops, and, as his letter to the Viceroy Eugène Beauharnais shows, the picked regiments of the whole Italian army. The Seventh Corps mustered in all more than 40,000 men, and 25,000 of these were concentrated under St. Cyr’s hand at Perpignan and Figueras. It is certain that the troops were not well equipped, and that the auxiliary services were ill represented. But this was not from exceptional malice on Napoleon’s part: he was always rather inclined to starve an army with which he was not present in person, and at this moment every resource was being strained to fit out the main force which were to deliver the great blow at Madrid. Catalonia was but a ‘side show’: and when St. Cyr tries to prove[53] that it was the most important theatre of war in the whole peninsula, he is but exaggerating, after the common fashion of poor humanity, the greatness of his own task and his own victories. [53] St. Cyr, p. 23. Before starting from Perpignan St. Cyr refitted, as best he could, the dilapidated battalions of Reille, which were, he says, in such a state of nudity that those who had been sent back within the French border had to be kept out of public view from motives of mere decency[54]. The whole division had suffered so much from exposure that instead of taking the field with the 8,000 men which it possessed in August, it could present only 5,500 in November, after setting aside a battalion to garrison Figueras[55]. [54] Ibid., p. 19.