‘Your letters of February 27 and 28 and March 2 have been laid before the Emperor. His Majesty thinks that not only must you concentrate at Salamanca, but that you must throw a bridge across the Agueda, so that, if the enemy leaves less than five divisions north of the Tagus, you may be able to advance to the Coa, against Almeida, and ravage all northern Portugal. If Badajoz is captured by two divisions of the enemy its loss will not be imputed to you, the entire responsibility will fall on the Army of the South. If the enemy leaves only two, three, or even four divisions north of the Tagus, the Army of Portugal will be to blame if it does not at once march against the hostile force before it, invest Almeida, ravage all northern Portugal, and push detachments as far as the Mondego. Its rôle is simply to “contain” six British divisions, or at least five: it must take the offensive in the North, or, if the enemy has taken the initiative, or other circumstances necessitate it, must dispatch to the Tagus, by Almaraz, the same number of divisions that Lord Wellington shall have dispatched to conduct the siege of Badajoz.’ This double-edged document reached Salamanca on March 27, _eleven days after Wellington had invested Badajoz_. The whole allied field army had marched for Estremadura in the last days of February, and not a single British division remained north of the Tagus. In accordance with the Emperor’s dispatches of February 11th and of February 18th, Marmont had already concentrated the bulk of his resources at Salamanca, drawing in everything except Bonnet (destined for the Asturias), Souham, who was left on the Esla to face the Army of Galicia, and the equivalent of another division distributed as garrisons in Astorga, Leon, Palencia, Zamora, and Valladolid. With five divisions in hand, or just coming up, he was on the move, as the Emperor had directed, to threaten Rodrigo and Almeida and invade northern Portugal. The Paris letter of March 12, quoted above, suddenly imposed on Marmont the choice between continuing the attack on Portugal, to which he was committed, or of leading his whole army by Almaraz to Badajoz--it must be the whole army, since he was told to send just as many divisions southward as Wellington should have moved in that direction, and every one of the seven units of the allied army had gone off.