The loss of Ciudad Rodrigo was a stunning blow to the French. They could not understand it at all. Herrasti and his Spaniards had held out the place a month against Ney and Massena, with thirty or forty thousand veterans, and that in fine weather, a great advantage to the besiegers--in eleven days, and in the depth of winter, Wellington reduced it, with twenty thousand men and opposed by a French garrison. The contrast was great, and quite inexplicable to the French. "On the 16th," wrote Marmont to Berthier, "the English batteries opened their fire at a great distance. On the 19th the place was taken by storm, and fell into the power of the enemy. There is something so incomprehensible in this event, that I allow myself no observation. I am not provided with the requisite information." No testimony could be more complimentary to the brave captors of Rodrigo. That great success, however, was only a forerunner of greater ones. Badajoz was the next place to be taken, preparatory to marching into the interior of Spain. To conceal his intentions from the enemy, Wellington had recourse to an elaborate stratagem. A powerful battering train, supplied by the men of war in the Tagus, was shipped at Lisbon, on board vessels of large size, which put out to sea, and, when out of sight of land, transhipped their cargo into smaller craft. These carried them up the Tagus into the heart of the country. At the same time the necessary magazines were formed; and at Elvas, only three leagues from Badajoz, a large quantity of fascines and gabions were prepared. All this, however, was done so quietly, Wellington appeared so supine, and Badajoz was so well provided, that Soult was lulled into security; and when at last he took the alarm, and marched from Seville at the head of twenty-five thousand men, it was too late. Philippon, and his brave garrison, did all that skill and courage could; but in vain. When Soult reached Villafranca, two days' march from Badajoz, the fortress had already been two days in the power of the English. This, to the French, was another unaccountable business; they, even yet, had not learned fully to appreciate the sovereign virtues of British bayonets. "I think the capture of Badajoz a very extraordinary event," Lery, Soult's chief engineer, wrote to General Kellerman, "and I am much at a loss to account for it in a clear and distinct manner." This comes at the end of a mysterious sort of epistle, in which the engineer general talks of fatality, and seems to think that the British had no right to take Badajoz, defended as it was. But Wellington and his army were great despisers of that sort of _right_, and, in spite of the really glorious defence, in spite of the strategy of the governor and the valour of the garrison, of _chevaux de frise_ of sword-blades, and of the deadly accuracy of the French artillery and musketeers, Badajoz was taken. The triumph was fearfully costly. Nearly four thousand five hundred men fell on the side of the