A more interesting problem, and one into which Napier went at great length, is the criticism of the campaigns of 1812 from the other point of view, that of Wellington. It is clear that there is nothing but praise to be bestowed on the masterly strategical combination of January and March, which brought about the captures of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. Each fell before a blow delivered at the precise moment when it must be most effective. The position of the enemy had been carefully calculated, and every adverse possibility taken into consideration. It is obvious that Rodrigo was doomed without fail from the first, because Wellington had realized and demonstrated to himself the inability of the French to hinder his enterprise, after the Imperial orders had sent Montbrun off to the borders of Valencia. And Badajoz was destined to fall also, unless Marmont should help Soult at the earliest possible moment and with the greatest possible force. There was in this case an adverse chance, though not a very great one: that it never came near to occurring was due to the Emperor’s removal of Marmont’s southern divisions from the Tagus valley. But even if this fortunate intervention of Napoleon had not simplified the task of the Allied Army, it was still improbable that Marmont would appear in time; and the improbability had been ascertained by careful study of the state of the magazines and the distribution of the cantonments of the Army of Portugal. Soult without Marmont could accomplish nothing, and on this fact Wellington based his plan. If the Duke of Dalmatia had brought up 10,000 men more than he actually did, his advance would still have been insufficient to save Badajoz. As to the details of the siege of that fortress, we have seen that things by no means went as Wellington desired. He himself threw the blame on the want of trained sappers, and the inexpertness of his engineer officers[241]. The engineers’ reply was that they were directed to work ‘against time’, and not given sufficient days or means to carry out their operations according to the regular methods of their craft. ‘The project of attack adopted would not stand the test of criticism as a scientific operation, but possessed merit as a bold experiment to reduce in an unusually short time a considerable fortress, well armed and well countermined, by the agency of unskilled sappers, no miners, and insufficient ordnance[242].’ Probably the verdict of the historian must be that the time-problem was the dominating fact, and that had there been no relieving armies in the field other methods would have been pursued[243]. It is at least certain that the rapidity with which the place was taken disconcerted Soult[244], and upset all the plans of the French in Spain.