The French forces, which were but small, had to retire behind the Ebro, one little army that had penetrated into Andalusia being actually surrounded and compelled to surrender. Simultaneously an English army landing in Portugal defeated the French at Vimiero, and obliged them to evacuate Portugal under a convention. Napoleon, more irritated than alarmed, poured vast armies into Spain, with the utmost ease defeated the Spanish levies that tried to stop him, and entered Madrid in triumph with his puppet brother in his train. Sir John Moore, who commanded the small English army in Portugal, made a brilliant march into the heart of Spain, threatening to cut Napoleon's communications with France; but he was far too weak to do more than trouble the emperor's repose. French forces of full double his numbers were sent to drive him into the sea, and succeeded, though Moore, turning to bay when he reached Corunna and found his ships not ready, inflicted on them a sharp repulse, of which his own life was the glorious price. Napoleon fondly dreamed that Spain was conquered, and returned to France, leaving Joseph as titular king, and several French armies to complete the work. Had Spain been left unsupported, a real conquest would still have been impossible, so long as the endurance of the people lasted. The Spanish armies, if such they can be called, were defeated and dispersed in fifty battles. Their generals on very few occasions showed any judgment or capacity. But the panic-stricken runaways of to-day enlisted again none the worse in two or three weeks; the generals discomfited to-day were ready to try again with a serene self-confidence that was not quite a step beyond the sublime. Guerilla bands spread everywhere, sometimes serving in a so-called regular army, sometimes behaving as brigands. A despatch could not be sent to France without a large escort: the duty of convoying supplies was incessant, harassing and often unsuccessful. French armies could march where they pleased, but could not permanently conquer a single square mile. On the other hand the Spaniards unaided could have achieved no definite success against the French armies, and the strain on Napoleon's resources, though real, would not have been ruinous. It was the English intervention which converted the Spanish ulcer, as Napoleon himself termed it, into a deadly disease eating into the very vitals of his power. A treaty of alliance was concluded between England and Spain, signed, as it happened, on the very day of the battle of Corunna (January 19, 1809). The English government did not then know how ignorant, how presumptuous, how untrustworthy, was the knot of self-chosen incapables who styled themselves the Spanish Junta. Nevertheless they took the wise resolution of basing their operations on Portugal and not on Spain. There was a very old alliance with Portugal, which had made the smaller power for a century almost a satellite of the greater one: the