Of the war of American independence it does not enter into my plan to write. A detailed narrative would only ring the changes on two or three simple themes. Disciplined troops might be expected, unless grossly ill-commanded, to have the advantage over the colonists. The vast extent of the country made it impossible for the small British armies effectually to occupy more than isolated bits. The generals sent out from England were some of them incompetent, some neglectful, all face to face with a task beyond their strength. Washington, who held the chief control of the colonial forces, did his work with great skill and most admirable patience, and he was on the whole fortunate in his subordinates. Had not France intervened, the war might very probably have been much longer protracted. But when France and Spain and Holland had all joined in the war, the British navy was no longer dominant in the Atlantic; supplies, reinforcements, communications generally, ceased to reach America with ease and certainty, and the case became hopeless. British credit was restored, to say the least, by the great naval victory of Rodney in the West Indies, and by the total failure of the French and Spaniards to make any impression on Gibraltar; but the American colonies had none the less achieved their independence. [Illustration: _MAP XIII._ _Outline Map of SPAIN & PORTUGAL_] CHAPTER XII THE PENINSULA PART I.—DEFENSIVE The French Revolution gave the signal for a long series of wars, in which France, thanks to the great military genius of Napoleon, got the better of all the nations of Europe, except England. At the end of the year 1807 Napoleon was at the height of his power; all central Europe was at his feet, and he had concluded with Russia the treaty of Tilsit, by which the two emperors agreed to support one another, at least passively, in further schemes of aggression. England alone was hostile, and England, though absolutely supreme at sea, was helpless on land, having not only no allies, but no field of action. Napoleon proceeded to give her both by his interference in the Spanish peninsula. First he made the Spanish government co-operate with him in a wolf-and-lamb quarrel with Portugal, occupied that little country with French troops, before whom the royal family fled to Brazil, and cheated Spain out of her share of the spoils. Then by a series of perfidious intrigues he insinuated a French army into the heart of Spain, got into his power the weak old king and his foolish heir, made them both renounce the Spanish crown, and ordered a few fugitive courtiers to salute his own brother Joseph as king of Spain. He knew that Spain had no trustworthy army; he had military possession of the capital, and took for granted that Spain would acquiesce. But the Spaniards, proud of past glories, intensely ignorant, and caring very little for the capital, where alone a few partisans of the new king could be found, broke out into insurrection everywhere.