concentrated, the road between Vittoria and Burgos was cut, and the _partidas_ descended from the Cantabrian mountains to threaten all the posts in Old Castile. And the concentration, when made, could only continue for a few days for lack of food, for there is hardly a region in Spain where a very large army, 80,000 or 100,000 men, can live on the country for a week. It was this, and no mere jealousy of rival generals, which forced Soult and Marmont to part, as we shall see, in June 1811, and Marmont and Dorsenne in September of the same year, and which in November 1812 prevented the immense body formed by the united Armies of the South, Centre, North, and Portugal, from pursuing Wellington to Ciudad Rodrigo. If such a force as 80,000 men were concentrated, it had to be fed; after a few days of living on the country it would be forced to ask for convoys. But convoys coming from long distances were the destined prey of the guerrilleros; if not captured they were at least delayed _ad infinitum_. Meanwhile the army in front would run out of provisions, and be forced to scatter itself once more in order to live. After Masséna’s venture no French marshal ever dared to think of plunging into Portugal, where he knew that he would find before him a country systematically devastated. No one was better aware of this limitation of the French power than Wellington. He had written as early as 1809 that the enemy could not turn him out of the Peninsula with anything less than 100,000 men, and that he could make such arrangements that an army of that number could not live in the country. The prophecy was fulfilled over and over again. With the enormous strength of the imperial armies it was not impossible to collect 80,000 or 100,000 men--but it was impossible to feed them. All concentrations must be but temporary. When the enemy was massed, the Anglo-Portuguese army might have to give ground, or only to accept an action under the most favourable conditions. But the French would soon have to scatter, and then Wellington regained his freedom of action. [285] Sometimes on absolutely false information, due to the Emperor’s vast distance from the theatre of war leading him to make hypotheses which had been falsified, because of the mistaken premises on which he grounded them. For example, on March 30, 1811, he told Berthier that Masséna’s head quarters were at Coimbra, and that a detachment of his army occupied Oporto, and these ‘news’ were to be sent on to Soult (_Correspondance_, 17,531). On that day Masséna was already behind the Coa on his retreat to Ciudad Rodrigo.