[235] An exaggeration, but hay was actually brought to Lisbon and Coimbra, and used for the English cavalry brigades, which had been sent to the rear and cantoned on the Lower Mondego. [236] Marmont to Berthier, Valladolid, Feb. 26. Marmont’s _Mémoires_, iv. pp. 344-5. [Illustration: _Marshal Marmont, Duke of Ragusa_] This was an admirable summary of the whole situation in Spain, and might have caused the Emperor to change his policy, if he had not by this time so hardened himself in his false conceptions as to be past conviction. As Marmont complains, his master had now built up for himself an imaginary picture of the state of affairs in the Peninsula, and argued as if the situation was what he wished it to be, not what it actually was. ‘Il suppose vrai tout ce qu’il voudrait trouver existant[237].’ [237] Marmont’s ‘Observations on the Imperial Correspondence of Feb. 1812,’ _Mémoires_, iv. p. 512. A subsequent letter from Paris, dated February 21st and received about March 2nd, contained one small amelioration of Marmont’s lot--he was told that he might take back Bonnet’s division, and not cede it to Dorsenne, on condition that he sent it at once to occupy the Asturias. But it then proceeded to lay down in the harshest terms the condemnation of the Marshal’s strategy: ‘The Emperor charges me to repeat to you that you worry too much about matters with which you have no concern. Your mission was to protect Almeida and Rodrigo--and you have let them fall. You are told to maintain and administer the North, and you abandon the Asturias--the only point from which it can be dominated and contained. You are getting into a state of alarm because Lord Wellington sends a division or two towards Badajoz. Now Badajoz is a very strong fortress, and the Duke of Dalmatia has 80,000 men, and can draw help from Marshal Suchet. If Wellington were to march on Badajoz [he had done so the day before this letter was written] you have a sure, prompt, and triumphant means of bringing him back--that of marching on Rodrigo and Almeida.’