Berthier’s dispatch[203], received on December 29th--it had taken sixteen days to reach its destination--informed Marmont that the Emperor had resolved to place the task of ‘containing’ Wellington, when he should operate north of the Tagus, in the hands of one instead of two commanders-in-chief. ‘Considering the importance of placing the command on the whole frontier of Portugal under a single general, His Majesty has decided that the provinces of Avila, Salamanca, Plasencia, Ciudad Rodrigo, the kingdom of Leon, Palencia, and the Asturias, shall belong to the Army of Portugal.’ Along with them were to be handed over to Marmont Souham’s division, then lying in the direction of Zamora, Benavente, and La Baneza, and Bonnet’s division, then in the Asturias--whose central parts (as it will be remembered[204]) that general had reconquered in November 1811. The district of the Army of the North was for the future to be limited to the eastern parts of Old Castile, Santander, Biscay, and Navarre. The real cause of this change, though Berthier’s dispatch lays no stress upon it, was the order recently sent to Dorsenne, which bade him return to France the two strong divisions of the Imperial Guard, which had hitherto formed the most important and effective section of the Army of the North. They were wanted for the probable Russian war, and without them Napoleon rightly judged that Dorsenne would be too weak to ‘contain’ Wellington, hold down all Leon, and observe the Galicians, in addition to hunting Mina and curbing the incursions of Longa and Porlier. Wherefore he resolved to confine the activity of the Army of the North to the lands east and north of Burgos, where its main task would be the crushing of Mina and his compatriots. Marmont should take upon his shoulders the entire responsibility for holding back the Anglo-Portuguese. [203] Printed in full in Marmont’s _Mémoires_, iv. pp. 271-6. [204] See vol. iv. p. 586.