task is to hold down the North, and that this task is much greater than that of holding the South, taking into consideration the news that an English force is said to be landing at Corunna (an improbable story, but one that is being repeatedly brought me), considering that the Portuguese and Galician troops threaten to take the offensive from Braganza, remembering that your letters of February 18 and 21 state that Suchet’s Army of Aragon is reckoned able to reinforce the Army of the South, and considering that my dispositions have been made (in spite of immense preliminary difficulties) for a fifteen days’ march on the Agueda, which is already begun, I decide in favour of continuing that operation, though I have (as I said before) no great confidence in its producing any effective result. ‘Accordingly I am putting the division that came up from the Tagus in motion for Plasencia, with orders to spread the rumour that it is to rejoin the army by the pass of Perales and enter Portugal; I start from here with three more divisions for the Agueda; ... if I fought on the Tormes I could put one more division in line, five in all: the number of seven divisions of which the Emperor speaks could only be concentrated if the Army of the North[240] could send two divisions to replace my own two now on the lines of communications and the Esla.’ [240] Marmont writes the Army of the Centre, evidently in confusion for the Army of the North. The nearest posts of the Army of the Centre were 150 miles away from the Esla, while the Army of the North at Burgos was much closer. Moreover, the Army of the Centre had not two infantry divisions, but only one--d’Armagnac’s--and some _Juramentado_ regiments.