Suchet, then, drew down Pannetier’s brigade from Aragon to strengthen his position on the Xucar, and waited, not altogether confidently, for the next move on the part of the enemy. But for a month no such move came. He had time to recover his equanimity, and to write dispatches to Paris which described his late campaign as a successful attempt to check the enemy’s initiative, which had brought him 2,000 Spanish prisoners at Yecla and Villena, and two British guns at the pass of Biar. Castalla was represented as a partial attack by light troops, which had been discontinued when the enemy’s full strength had been discovered, and the losses there were unscrupulously minimized. And, above all, good cause had been shown that the Army of Aragon and Valencia could not spare one man to help King Joseph in the North. But the ‘plan of campaign’ was on its way, and we shall see how, even in Murray’s incompetent hands, it gave the Marshal Duke of Albufera full employment for May and June. SECTION XXXVI THE MARCH TO VITTORIA CHAPTER I WELLINGTON’S PLAN OF CAMPAIGN Good generals are very properly averse to putting on paper, even for the benefit of premiers or war ministers, the plan of their next campaign. Points of leakage are so inscrutable, and so hard to detect, that the less that is written the better is it for the projected enterprise. And Wellington was the most reticent of men--even going to the length of hiding from his own responsible subordinates intentions that they much desired to learn, and of giving orders that seemed eccentric while the secret reason for them was kept concealed. He never wrote autobiographical memoirs--the idea was repulsive to him--nor consented to open up (even to William Napier, who much desired it) his full confidence. For the genesis of the plan of the Vittoria Campaign we are compelled to rely mainly on the careful collection of hints from his contemporary dispatches, supplemented by certain rare confidential letters, and some _obiter dicta_ of his later years, which may or may not have been reproduced with perfect accuracy by admirers like Croker or Lord Stanhope.