[149] Miot, ii. 432. Compare Joseph’s hysterical letter to the Emperor (Ducasse, vii. 236): ‘La pacification générale de l’Andalousie sera opérée.... Mais, sire, au nom du sang français et du sang espagnol rappelez Loison, Kellermann, Thouvenot! Ces hommes nous coûtent bien cher!’ It is curious that he, in the same letter, quotes as ‘hommes honnêtes,’ along with Mortier, Suchet, and Reynier, both Soult and Sebastiani, who were plunderers on as large a scale as Kellermann or Loison. Open resistance, however, had ceased, save at Cadiz and in the inaccessible recesses of the Sierra Nevada. Andalusia had been subdued from end to end, and neither the King nor Soult yet realized that a lamentable strategic mistake had been made when 70,000 veteran troops had been pinned down to garrison the newly conquered realm, while Portugal and Wellington’s army remained untouched. In their conception, as in that of the Emperor, the conquest of Portugal was to be sufficiently provided for by the new reinforcements which were now pouring over the Ebro, to the number of over 100,000 sabres and bayonets. SECTION XIX THE PORTUGUESE CAMPAIGN OF 1810. THE PRELIMINARIES: JANUARY-AUGUST 1810 CHAPTER I THE MILITARY GEOGRAPHY OF PORTUGAL The continual existence of Portugal down to the present day in face of the persistent hostility and immensely superior force of its neighbour Spain seems at first sight to be one of the most inexplicable phenomena in modern history. It appears all the more astounding when we remember that the lesser kingdom was once conquered, and held down for sixty years, by the greater power. Few states have won back and maintained their independence in such masterful fashion as did Portugal, in the long ‘War of Independence’ that followed the insurrection of 1640 under the house of Braganza. But intense national spirit and heroic obstinacy on the part of the smaller people are not sufficient to account for the survival of the Portuguese kingdom as a separate entity. Its geography, which at the first sight seems hopelessly unfavourable to its defence, turns out on investigation to be eminently suitable for resistance against an attack from the east. On a first glance at the map it appears as if Portugal was composed of no more than the lower valleys of three great Spanish rivers, the Douro, the Tagus, and the Guadiana, so that the state which owns three-quarters of the course of each of these streams has but to send down its armies from the uplands of Leon and New Castile, to conquer the narrow land which lies about their estuaries. But nothing can be more deceptive than the map, when the Iberian Peninsula is in question. As we observed in our earlier volume[150], the rivers of Spain and Portugal are not highways, or lines of communication, but barriers--torrents sunk in gorges cut deep below the level of the face of the land. The chief roads, with few exceptions, avoid, instead of courting, the neighbourhood of