After the fall of Badajoz Wellington had his choice between the invasion of Andalusia and that of the valley of the Douro. It can hardly be doubted that he was right in choosing the latter, not only on the ground which he himself stated, that Marmont’s was the ‘operating army’[245] and the more dangerous of the two, but because (as Marmont put it) a disaster in the North would compel the French to evacuate the South, while a disaster in the South would have no such effect in the North. The victory of Salamanca liberated Andalusia and Madrid as well as the Douro valley--a similar victory somewhere in front of Seville would have cleared Andalusia, no doubt, but would not have sufficed to deliver the Castiles and Leon. The Northern operation was the most decisive. The well-timed storm of the Almaraz forts secured for that operation a reasonable amount of time, during which it could not be disturbed by the appearance of reinforcements for the Army of Portugal. The irruption into Leon in June, for which such careful subsidiary operations had been made on all sides--in Andalusia and Catalonia, on the Bay of Biscay and in Navarre--had at first all the results that could have been expected. But it can hardly be denied that a grave mistake was made when no adequate preparations were made for the siege of the Salamanca forts--and this was a mistake that was to be repeated under very similar circumstances before Burgos in September. There was nothing to prevent a proper battering-train from being brought out from Rodrigo or Almeida. Yet a worse slip, most certainly, was made when on June 21st Wellington refused the battle that Marmont most rashly offered. He could have fought with the advantage of numbers, position, and superiority in cavalry, in a measure that he was not to enjoy again during the Salamanca campaign. Why he held back we now know--he thought (and not without good reason) that if he did not attack Marmont, the presumptuous Marshal would attack him. Such a project indeed was in his adversary’s mind, and if it had been carried out the result would undoubtedly have been a second Bussaco. But Marmont hesitated--and was saved for the moment. That he was able to retire with an intact army behind the Douro was a terrible disappointment to Wellington; for, during the deadlock that ensued for nearly three weeks, the French Armies of the North, South, and Centre might have spared reinforcements for the Army of Portugal. Soult’s perversity, Caffarelli’s want of perception of the relative importance of things, and King Joseph’s tardiness prevented these possible reinforcements from getting up in time. But this Wellington could not foresee, and he was under the impression that nothing was more possible than the arrival of Marmont’s expected succours. If the French should play the right game, Wellington thought it probable that he might have had to evacuate Salamanca and his other recent conquests, and to retire to the