The Prime Minister sat down next morning to communicate the fact to Wellington, and to consult him upon the logical consequences. ‘There has been,’ he wrote, ‘no example within the last twenty years, among all the extraordinary events of the French Revolution, of such a change of fortune as Bonaparte has experienced during the last five months. The most formidable army ever collected by Bonaparte has been substantially destroyed. It only remains to be ascertained whether he will succeed in escaping himself--and with what remnant of an army.... Under these circumstances the question naturally occurs whether he will leave the French army in Spain? We have a report that he has already ordered 40,000 men from that country to rejoin him--but it is only a report. I am inclined, however, to be of opinion that he will withdraw the greater part of his forces from Spain. The only efficient French Army at the present moment in existence is that under Soult: and whatever it may cost Bonaparte to abandon Spain, I think he will prefer that alternative to the loss of Germany. I may be wrong in this speculation, but give you my reasons, and I am particularly desirous of calling your attention to this view of the subject, in order that you may take the necessary means for obtaining early information of the movements of any French divisions toward the frontier, and that you may consider what measures may be proper to be adopted if my conjecture should be realized[303].’ Thus on the first day after the arrival of the epoch-making bulletin, and before it was known that Napoleon himself had reached Paris, the great strategical question of the winter of 1812-13 was formulated, and put before Wellington. Will the French evacuate Spain? and, if so, what should be done with the British Army in the Peninsula? There were three possible contingencies--(1) the Emperor might abandon Spain altogether, in order to have the nucleus of an army ready for the campaign of 1813 in Germany, or (2) he might not evacuate Spain altogether, but might cut down his forces there, and order them to stand on the defensive only, or (3) he might value his prestige so highly that he would take little or nothing in the way of troops from the Peninsula, and endeavour to make head against the Russians with whatever remnant of an army might be left him in the North, with the conscripts of 1813, and the levies of the German States--if the latter should remain obedient to him[304].