[107] He then pushed on to Cadiz, where he was on the 6th-7th, spent a night at Seville again on the 9th-10th, and was back at Badajoz on the 11th of November. At Cadiz he parted with his brother, who was just embarking for England, to take up his place in the new Ministry. [108] As late as Oct. 28 he had written to Colonel Roche, the British officer attached to the staff of the Army of the Centre, to beg him to press on the newly-arrived Areizaga the necessity of adopting a defensive posture, and risking nothing. From the wording of the letter it is clear that no hint of the orders sent to Areizaga from Seville had reached Badajoz. _Wellington Dispatches_, v. 248-9, see also the dispatch to Castlereagh on p. 267. [109] See Wellington to Roche, and to B. Frère, Badajoz, Nov. 19. _Dispatches_, v. 292-3 and 294. [110] ‘Nothing can save them save a victory by Areizaga, and the possession of Madrid, _which are the most improbable of events_.... If Del Parque and Albuquerque are destroyed, _which is not unlikely, indeed pretty certain_ ... we must make our arrangements for the defence of Portugal.’ Wellington to Beresford, Nov. 20, 1809. At the present moment the strength of the French troops in Spain was not sufficient to provide two armies for offensive purposes, the one destined to march on Seville, the other on Lisbon. The numbers at the front had not appreciably increased since the autumn, though already the reinforcements which the Emperor had set upon the march, after concluding his peace with Austria, had begun to appear at Bayonne, and to cross the Bidassoa. But in December and January the roads were bad, the days short, and provisions hard to procure. Hence Wellington reckoned that, till the spring should arrive, the allies would have to face no more than the forces which were already opposed to them. When, however, the campaigning season should have come round, and the reinforcements from Germany should have been incorporated with the old Army of Spain, he thought that Portugal would be the enemy’s main objective. It was therefore his intention to withdraw his army, or at least the greater part of it, from Spanish Estremadura, and to arrange it so as to cover Lisbon, even though by making this movement he was weakening the left flank of the defence of Andalusia. If he had to choose between the interests of Portugal and those of Spain, he was prepared to sacrifice the latter. His reasons were simple: (1) he considered Portugal more important in the grand strategy of the defence of the Peninsula than Andalusia; (2) he regarded it as more defensible, and he had already--as we shall presently see--sketched out and commenced the construction of his great lines of Torres Vedras, in which his trust as a final impregnable stronghold was already fixed; (3) he held that although Great Britain was pledged to assist both Spain and Portugal, yet her moral obligation to the