I find myself equally at variance with Napier’s estimate of the relative share of responsibility that falls on Soult upon the one side and King Joseph and Jourdan on the other, for the disasters of the summer of 1812. Jourdan’s plan of campaign, set out in his ‘May _Mémoire_’ [see pp. 303-11], is a most clear-headed and practicable scheme; the adoption of it would have reduced the effect of Wellington’s strategy, and have set a limit to his successes. Soult wrecked the whole scheme by wilful disobedience, which sinned as much against military discipline as against common sense. The counter-projects which he kept sending to Jourdan and the King were founded on his own personal desires, not on a consideration of the general situation in the Peninsula. Soult had been kind and courteous to Napier while the historian was working at the French archives, and had placed his own private papers at his disposition. I think that the obligation was repaid by the mildness of the censures passed on the Marshal’s strange behaviour in the summer of 1812. A smaller proportion of the pages of this volume than of its predecessors is occupied by the tale of those campaigns in the Peninsula in which the British took no part. The year 1812 commences with the surrender of Blake and the occupation of Valencia by the French. When that great city and the army that had been driven into it succumbed before Suchet’s attack, there was no longer any large Spanish force in the field, and the operations of Lacy, Ballasteros, and the Galicians are of only secondary importance and require no great attention. Indeed the most effective service done against the French in 1812 was that of the guerrilleros of Aragon, Cantabria, and Navarre, whose obstinate resistance immobilized such a large portion of the 230,000 imperial troops that lay in Spain. It will be noted that I have had to devote a considerable number of pages to a much-neglected episode of the summer of 1812--the campaigns against Caffarelli of the irregular bands of the North, assisted by the fleet of Sir Home Popham. It cannot be too often repeated that by immobilizing the 35,000 men of the French Army of the North, they co-operated in the most effective way with Wellington, and had their share in making the Salamanca campaign a success for the allies. I trust that I may have succeeded in making the topographical details clear at Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and more especially Salamanca, all of which I have visited. I spent many hours going over the ground at the Arapiles, and found that no mere map could have enabled one to grasp the situation in a satisfactory fashion.