After all, a much larger body of French troops than Suchet’s field force in front of Valencia was being at this time kept completely employed, by enemies who owned a far less numerous following than Campbell or Elio. The little Army of Catalonia, not 8,000 strong, was finding employment all through the autumn and winter for Decaen’s 20,000 men; and Duran and Villacampa in Aragon--aided occasionally by Mina from the side of Navarre, and Sarsfield from the side of Catalonia--were keeping the strong force under Reille, Severoli, and Caffarelli in constant movement, and occasionally inflicting severe loss on its flying columns. Their co-operation in the general cause was useful and effective--that of the Alicante Army was not. To sum up all the operations on the eastern side of Spain we may say that there had been practically no change in the situation of the adversaries since February. The amount of territory occupied by the French was unchanged--they had made no progress in the pacification of Aragon or Catalonia; but on the other hand Suchet’s hold on Valencia still remained entirely unshaken. SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER VII CRITICAL SUMMARY OF THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1812 Though Wellington’s divisions took up in December 1812 almost the same cantonments that they had occupied in December 1811, ere they marched out at midwinter to the leaguer of Ciudad Rodrigo, the aspect of affairs in the Peninsula had been completely transformed during the intervening twelve months. It was not merely that Andalusia, Estremadura, and Asturias had been freed from the presence of the French armies, who were never to return. Nor was it merely that--to use Wellington’s own words[233]--‘we have sent to England little less than 20,000 prisoners,[234] have taken and destroyed, or have now ourselves the use of, the enemy’s arsenals in Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Valladolid, Madrid, Astorga, Seville, and the lines before Cadiz, and upon the whole have taken or destroyed, or now possess, little short of 3,000 pieces of their cannon[235].’ Nor was it the all-important thing that the Armies of Portugal, the Centre, and the South, Wellington’s immediate enemies, were in November weaker by 30,000 men than they had been in March, and this though they had received 10,000 men in drafts since the summer ended. The fact that really counted was that the whole French system in Spain had been shaken to its foundations. It was useless to pretend any longer that King Joseph was a legitimate sovereign, and the Cadiz government a mere knot of rebels driven into their last and remotest place of refuge. The dream of complete conquest, which had lingered on down to the moment of Suchet’s capture of Valencia, was gone for ever. The prestige of the French arms was shattered: the confidence of the officers in the marshals, that of the men in their officers, had disappeared. As Foy, the most intelligent of the French observers, sums up the matter, what hope was there for