On receiving the Emperor’s original orders King Joseph hastened to obey, though the removal of his court from Madrid to Valladolid looked to him like the abandonment of his pose as King of Spain. He ordered Soult’s successor, Gazan, to evacuate La Mancha, and to draw back to the neighbourhood of Madrid, leaving a small detachment of light troops about Toledo. The Army of the South also took over the province of Avila from the Army of Portugal, and it was intended that it should soon relieve the Army of the Centre in the province of Segovia. For Joseph had made up his mind that any help which he must give against the northern rebels should be furnished by D’Erlon’s little army, which he would stretch out from Segovia towards Burgos and the Ebro[373], and so take Mina and the insurgents of Navarre in the rear. Early in March all these movements were in progress, and (as we have seen in the last chapter) were beginning to be reported to Wellington, who made many deductions from them. Joseph himself transferred his head-quarters to Valladolid on March 23rd, by which time the greater part of the other changes had been carried out. The Emperor afterwards criticized his brother’s delay of a whole month between the receipt of his orders to decamp and his actual arrival at Valladolid. To this Jourdan made the reply that it was useless to move the head-quarters till the drawing in of the Army of the South had been completed, and that the bringing in of such outlying units as Daricau’s division from the province of Cuenca, and the transference of the Army of the Centre northward, took much time[374]. Evacuations cannot be carried out at a day’s notice, when they involve the moving of magazines and the calling in of a civil administration.